This invitation card in the shape of the Interbau logo (International Building Exhibition, abbreviated to IBA) invites visitors to both the Interbau and the Industrial Exhibition. Both took place in West Berlin in the summer of 1957. The invitation can be seen as an “I”, a “B”, a measuring instrument or a concrete construction.
Among other projects, the war-damaged Hansaviertel neighbourhood was rebuilt for the Interbau: A 25-hectare modern residential neighbourhood was erected with around 1,300 residential units and shops, surrounded by large green spaces. While the old Hansaviertel was a bourgeois villa neighbourhood, the planners focused on social needs and living together in the urban space. Visitors to the exhibition were able to move between country pavilions, information stands with design concepts and furnished model flats with contemporary furniture. A ropeway and a show crane provided aerial perspectives.
The industrial exhibition had been held annually at the radio tower on the exhibition grounds since 1950 and promoted West German technical innovations. Its aim was to stimulate the West German economy in the post-war years and make it visible on an international level. In 1957, the IBA shifted the focus to the construction industry.
Both exhibitions were intended to present West Berlin as a place of the liberal world during the Cold War. This applied in particular to the construction of the Hansaviertel, which was presented as a modern, liberal-minded counterpart to the reconstruction of East Berlin, especially Stalinallee (now Karl-Marx-Allee).
In 2021, the Hansaviertel and the Congress Hall, together with the first and second construction sections of Karl-Marx-Allee, were placed on the Berlin Tentative List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. However, on 31 December 2023, it was announced that the project “Berlin East West East. Architecture and Urbanism of Post-War Modernism” was not nominated for the national tentative list.
This invitation card is part of the exhibition “Profitopolis or the Condition of the City”.
