THE FIELD OF DECONSTRUCTION, RESISTANCE AND DISCOURSE: A German Legacy Response _ DAGMAR RICHTER | Architect and Educator

Born in Germany, post World War II, as part of the generation with the ‘grace of late births’, Dagmar Richter describes the impact of that context and time on her work, identity and places she has since lived. She talks about engagement and discourse in her work as an architect and educator, as the necessary antithesis of the wall of silence she experienced when young. Her work deconstructs, exposes and reveals what is often uncomfortable, or what she calls ‘not smooth’.

Transcript

THE FIELD OF DECONSTRUCTION, RESISTANCE AND DISCOURSE:                                                      A German Legacy Response 

DAGMAR RICHTER | German Architect | Educator

S2 EPISODE 6: TRANSCRIPT  June 13, 2022

[00:00:00] Dagmar: 

[00:00:03] "In one sense I had that freedom, because there was no grounding. Therefore I was a lot more moveable, which in the end you could also say that I was permanently looking for a home, and I actually lately did a list, how many homes I was trying. I love building and I always wanted to create this nest. Now I feel that some of them are my home, but in the end I always fail, which means, at the moment it became a home, I started to move. Again, I had no roots, and I was not getting roots. There was always this weighing between grounding and having roots, and freedom. But it becomes a burden, because there is such a desire to be grounded, but at the same time, one then uses and abuses one's own idea of freedom, by then trying to overcome that there is no grounding possible.""

[00:01:00] Nina: "I'm Nina Freedman, and this is WHEREING. WHEREING explores where we are. It is dedicated to those who believe in the inherent right of belonging, and all the ways we feel we belong. And connect to ourselves, to each other, and the spaces that hold the stories where all of this comes alive. Where each experience of belonging is a work of art, created by chance or by design. Dare I ask, is belonging where you are, not what matters most? WHEREING is the spatial story. Welcome."

[00:01:43] Dagmar Richter is a German architect and US Professor of Architecture who has been in private practice in Berlin, Germany, and the United States since 1989, conducting design research and design build projects. She studied architecture at the technical university of Stuttgart Germany, followed by degrees from the Royal Art Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark and the international postgraduate program at the Staedl school or Stadelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. She was the Chair of Architecture at Cornell University and Pratt School of Architecture and has taught at Harvard University, UCLA, art academies in Stutgart and Berlin, Columbia University, and Rhode Island School of Design. Currently, she is teaching at Pratt Institute in New York. She has lectured internationally, published two monographs and has exhibited her design work around the world. I have invited her to speak about her work and teaching, but specifically I am interested in speaking with her about the impact of her German identity, born post World War II and how this identity has been woven into her life, places she has lived, and her work. 

[00:03:01] Welcome Dagmar! Thank you so much for joining me today. 

[00:03:05] Dagmar: Thank you for inviting me. It's a privilege to be in this podcast. 

[00:03:09] Nina: Dagmar, what part of Germany were you born in? 

[00:03:13] Dagmar: I was born in, I would call it the ugliest city in the world. It's called Ludwigshafen. And, it's about 20 miles away from the French border. So, it's a rather western part of Germany. Ludwigshafen has a very painful history. It has a huge company called BASF and they were part of the old Igfaben, which was involved in chemical weaponry, and I don't know what, during the second world war. So, that city was bombed because of that huge industry. I think it was bombed 98%. Wow. Only ruins left. And, that company was then renamed. It became BASF and that was to shed the history, which they had.

[00:04:05] Nina: Interesting. So, it was near the French border. 

[00:04:08] Dagmar: It's along the Rhine river. It is about maybe 30 miles north of Strasbourg, which is in France. And Strasbourg is along the Rhine. When you go down the Rhine, it goes out in Netherlands. Alsace. And, Alsace is an interesting area because it became French, German, French, German. So our accent, which Germans would recognize right away, have a lot of French words in them. 

[00:04:38] Nina: Being a post-World War II child in Germany, would you describe some of the memories in your environment as a child, in your city. What was the context? What do you remember and how did you experience it as a child? If we think about the ruins of war and the simultaneous rebuilding of the country, what do you remember?

[00:04:59] Dagmar: Well, to go a little bit into family history, past WW II, were few young male survivors. One of the few ones was my father, who was recruited to the war when he was about 16. They closed the high schools down and sent them to war or shot them. When all of those industries wanted to start again and rebuilding, and it was frantic building, they built one L-shaped housing complex about four miles away from this big company, for recruitment of those young men, because in Germany at that point, women normally didn't work, who just got out of the university, which means that they started studying right after the war. They just got out of the university, normally around '50, '51 and to recruit them, they needed to have housing for them. So there was a very interesting condition. I always thought it was the most social experimental condition, you could imagine. Always wanted to write something about it. That L-shape had about 40 families. Those all had male engineers or chemists. Exactly the same age. They had the same kind of life trajectory and they all had between two and three children, more or less at the same age. So we were 30, 40 children who were meeting every morning in this courtyard, and even now we following each other on Facebook, because that was such a special history. We played in the ruins, which for us was the best playground ever. And there were a lot of ruinous villas behind us which had gorgeous gardens in the old days. They were all wild gardens, and we built our own houses in these gardens. During the whole childhood, and trajectory further out and going to university, we knew what everybody else was doing. 

[00:06:58] Nina: So, your father was recruited into the war. He had no choice. They had to join or they were killed. Then, after the war, there were still universities, even though Germany was bombed all over the place, universities existed. 

[00:07:14] Dagmar: Well, they were rebuilt I guess, or they were in some strange, temporary buildings.

[00:07:20] Nina: So, he went to university, got married, and brought his wife, your mother, and maybe you were young at that point. You became part of this young family community.

[00:07:30] Dagmar: Yeah, it was a kind of a practical community. They were all same level of education, same age, two children, the same age. But they came from all over Germany. That is also interesting, because none of them regarded that town as their home, and nobody came from that area. So, whoever was recruited, they were recruited from Munich, from Berlin, from all these universities. My father actually came from Dresden. Because of the bombing of Dresden, there

were very few survivors in his family. They took these 16 year old boys and put them into submarines. And there, it was survival. They were under water and were in the process of dying. My mother who was from Munich, she was 12. She Had to go down to the basements every morning to pull out dead bodies. And, she survived. My father was lucky to be in, I think, one of the only submarines which survived the second world war. All the others, as far as I know died. 

[00:08:31] Nina: You were saying that there were so few men left after the war. I'm wondering, did it create a generation of women that were single? That was still a generation where women were marrying. 

[00:08:44] Dagmar: Yeah. What happened, that's also quite interesting, that these very young wives from all over Germany with these relatively established, studied young males, they behaved always very supportive and did anything society wanted them to do, because they felt so lucky a) to be alive and b) having a husband. And so, they were always a very practical team, all of these wives with each other, also with their husbands. And then, surrounded not in that L-shaped building because it was for couples with children and very young, everywhere where we walked, there were single women, which were a little bit older, not in the marriage age, but even when they were in the marriage age. They were all called war widows and there were tons of them. 

[00:09:31] Nina: Yeah. So they will either never married, I guess, or married and having lost somebody. They were still called widows. 

[00:09:37] Dagmar: Yeah, we called them all war widows and we didn't know if they were married or not. They were single and a certain age where normally you would be married. 

[00:09:45] Nina: Something I'm also curious about is, what you're describing sounds very functional. Life is set up, you have a home, you have your family, everything's clean, and you go to work, et cetera. But I think after the war, I mean, there was this time of survival, right. I think what you're describing is a period that came afterwards.

[00:10:08] Dagmar: Yeah. I mean, in one sense, practically, these women tried to create the idea of a family. So, what I told you about my father and his story of survival in a submarine, or my mother talking about pulling dead bodies out of basements in Munich. That was one single evening. It was the only evening we ever heard about their childhood. They also never talked about their parents. There was always a huge atmosphere of guilt and shame. So in a sense, we grew up without a family narrative, and in that sense also without an identity, besides a shameful one. And, we experienced an enormous amount of silence about history, which means that there was just practical answers, what to eat, how to eat, how to get the food. When we asked questions as children, we were sent out of the room or, it's not important right now, 

[00:11:10] Nina: I want to dig into this a little bit more deeply because there was a process I imagine for you on how you discovered the wider narrative, and what you describe as playing in the ruins and that's the greatest playground and you build these little homes there. This is the innocence of childhood. You don't know any different. 

[00:11:29] Dagmar: No, we didn't at that point. 

[00:11:30] Nina: This is Nina Friedman. And I'm speaking with Dagmar Richter, a German architect and US professor of architecture. We are speaking about the impact of being born in Germany, post World War II, as part of the generation granted the title of those with 'grace of late births' on her work, identity, and places she has lived. 

[00:11:55] Aside from this one night of conversation, how did you discover and find out the story? How did you piece it together, and then what did you really find out? 

[00:12:06] Dagmar: Well, that is where it becomes very difficult for our generation because we were stonewalled by that generation, our parents. I had a grandmother who once in a while dropped a couple of stories, in Munich, and that's where I heard a little bit how my mother must've felt. We, of course, asked questions more and more. We were going to the library, trying to find books, but, you know, it's quite interesting. There was not a lot right after the second world war, where things were openly discussed. It was more, super traumatized parents. You know, that's kind of our informational base. At the same time, of course we expected to be informed in public school. In Germany, school was only public. There were no private schools. The schools were good. And, what happened then, during history while we were pushing and pushing and trying to figure out what was going on, here was our history teacher. So, the history was going upwards towards modernism. Right. And they were all fine with everything. Before WWI, we were quite informed, but at the moment, WW II came in, there was no time left. So we didn't hear anything about the second world war, and we were very aggressive to our history teacher and he then started to cry, and he said he was at the Russia front and was then a war criminal, of course, in prison for many years in Russia, barely surviving. They were all in war prison. My father too. This teacher, who was in Russia, he said, I can never, ever speak about those experiences again. I'm so sorry. I have to stop. So we did not hear anything about the German history in school either, particularly not about the second world war. Then in the first years in college, we go to school for 13 years, and after that, we study totally specialization. There is no general education at the university. 

[00:14:07] Nina: Going back again to your parents experience and how you found out and pieced all these things together. Were there any other facts that you found out about your mother's experience? 

[00:14:19] Dagmar: I did not find anything out because she was an absolute wall of silence. I found out a little bit from my aunt, which was the sister of my father, as well as two or three side narratives of my grandmother, the mother of my mother. They were talking a lot about that right after second world war, they were very young, 16, 17 years old. And many years, right after the war these young women were very busy with survival, and more or less all of them were gang raped by the soldiers who occupied all of these areas. My aunt was assaulted sexually. My mother, it was total silence. My assumption is she was, but I cannot tell you. 

[00:15:11] Nina: Interesting growing up with all this silence, and secrecy and hidden trauma. 

[00:15:16] Dagmar: And this is also quite interesting. Psychiatry or therapy was entirely frowned upon. So, we were not children where even any kind of psychological or therapeutic discourse or treatments were available or acceptable. So, that silence was kind of a blanket over a trauma, which they were unwilling, unable, who knows to work through. 

[00:15:44] Nina: Right. And they didn't take advantage of any therapeutic treatment even as they got older, I would imagine, when it became more popular.

[00:15:52] Dagmar: No.

[00:15:52] Nina: The social generation that you grew up with, your friends, your schoolmates, for example, born after the war, you, for lack of a better word, inherited these unknown details. But as you grew older, you knew them much more, the legacy of the guilt, the shame, even though you, yourself and your whole generation had nothing to do with it. But the German identity, the German culture, the German history is something that's in you, and I'm wondering, how did your generation, your social generation deal with this? 

[00:16:26] Dagmar: Well, at least for me, and for some of the people I grew up with, the guilt and shame was kind of translated into that we didn't want to be German. We, as a group, were called the group with the 'grace of late births', which means that we have this grace of being officially innocent, but at the same time, it didn't work for us. We were born later than what happened, but at the same time inside us somewhere, because we started to know more and more about it, that shame and guilt became a kind of an inner structure, which made being German for many of us, for me at least, very problematic. And so, if I'm looking at the so-called particular group, I would say that, like 50% of them left Germany when they were young, after high school. And so, we were all very, very open to leave Germany because it had no value. Actually, it had only negative value and many of us were very good and trying to fit in, into all of these other cultures. And then of course realized that we were carrying that shame and guilt, and were often confronted by others that we still were German, even if we tried so hard to not have an accent . When we were asked where we were from, I often lied and said I was from Denmark because I lived in Denmark, was educated in Denmark. I mean, I left Germany after high school quite quickly and studied in Denmark, in Copenhagen. And there, it was the first time I really confronted German-ness and that was mainly by negative reactions from my fellow students and from people I met. It was only then that it really became clear to me how guilty I was, purely by being born in Germany, or rather by being born by two German parents. It was relatively easy to speak Danish. It was not very easy to not have a German accent. That was always a hide and seek game all my life. Not wanting to be German. 

[00:18:36] Nina: In trying to settle yourself in another home, you've lived in quite a few places, correct?

[00:18:43] Dagmar: Yes. 

[00:18:44] Nina: Finding a home, the feeling of being home, can you speak to that? 

[00:18:48] Dagmar: That is quite interesting, because when I started to study architecture and of course in one sense I had that freedom because there was no grounding. I always felt I was not grounded. And therefore, I had more freedom, and I did not belong. Therefore I was a lot more moveable, which in the end you could also say that I was permanently looking for a home, and I actually lately did a list, how many homes I was trying. And that means that I settled in an apartment, in a house, whatever, and used all my design energy, but also normally I built a lot myself. I love building and I always wanted to create this nest. I always thought that I was this nest creator, and I think I did one in Copenhagen, one in Boston, three Los Angeles, three in New York City, two in the North Fork in Long Island, two in Berlin and one in Bavaria. Now I feel that some of them are my home, but in the end I always fail, which means at the moment it became a home, I started to move. Again, I had no roots, and I was not getting roots. 

[00:20:01] Nina: It's interesting how your architectural education both served you as a designer, but also served you cultivating a sense of homelessness. 

[00:20:12] Dagmar: Right. Yeah. That becomes again, a little bit like the practical thing, right? I have a well-functioning kitchen. You have this, you have that. And since I don't have any roots, it was relatively easy for me to move on and leave everything behind. I always had this little box of things, which were the only items, which were from my family history. The things from my family fit in half of a suitcase, and the rest I always left behind. Often I rented these things out fully furnished because, you know, I was done. I mean, I didn't need any of it anymore. 

[00:20:46] Nina: Your capacity to leave is strong. 

[00:20:49] Dagmar: Yes. There was always this weighing between grounding and having roots, and freedom. But it becomes a burden, because there is such a desire to be grounded, but at the same time, one then kind of uses and abuses one's own idea of freedom, by then trying to overcome that there is no grounding possible.

[00:21:13] Nina: Another architect without this history might buy properties with the idea of development to maybe not even live there, but that was not the way you approached it. 

[00:21:24] Dagmar: No, not at all. I mean, I was not doing that. It's kind of interesting because you know, as I'm doing this, I'm touching all surfaces. They have to belong to me in order to do that. In all of them, I lived minimum two, three years. I was always very slow. My children complained bitterly that they were always in a construction site. I was never ready. And, at the moment it was ready, now we are having a home, I moved again. 

[00:21:50] 

[00:21:50] Nina: This is Nina Friedman. And I'm speaking with Dagmar Richter, a German architect and US professor of architecture. We are speaking about the impact of being born in Germany, post World War II, as part of the generation granted the title of those with 'grace of late births' on her work, identity, and places she has lived. 

[00:22:13] I would like to talk a little bit more about your work. First, let's talk about some of your early projects. There are three that I'm thinking of, and I'm sure they have theme relationships with each other. One is the mapping Berlin competition that you've done. The other is the work on Potsdamer Platz and then the Prague National Library Competition. I'd love to hear more about these, and how they relate potentially, to these ideas that you grew up with - the secrets of uncovering. 

[00:22:45] Dagmar: So, let's talk about the first one where there's an image which was called 'Mapping Berlin', which I did as a research actually, and then used that research to enter a competition .That was probably in the nineties, I'm not sure. There was a huge worldwide competition for the new government buildings for the reunited Germany. So, the old Reichstag, a word which I can barely say because it has the word Reich in it, was actually a ruin, because it was exactly between socialist Germany in the wall area and the capitalist area in Berlin Island. That was now again, the new center of government, which we were kind of nervous about because, after the second world war German government was in a tiny little town in Western Germany. The Eastern socialists stayed in Berlin, and had no trouble with having that as the capital. But the Western Germans had big difficulties having Berlin again as a capital, but they decided after they were reunited, to create a new capital in Berlin. 

[00:23:49] Nina: This was after the wall fell? 

[00:23:52] Dagmar: Yes. But, right away, they were very busy building up this unified Germany; a lot of building activities going on in Berlin. So, my competition entry was all about how to deconstruct the Reichstag, and I got very interested in the philosophy of deconstruction and how to deconstruct the image of Berlin, which was based on Albert Speer's Berlin plan, and which had to do with the big north south axes, with all their celebrated huge buildings and monumental structures, which they were planning. When Berlin was more or less bombed to 98%, right before the world war was over, Mr. Speer said that he was very happy that Berlin was bombed so much. Of course, he was totally convinced that Germany will win, so he could finally build his image of Berlin as the absolute capital. For me, it was such a horrible set up. In this mapping, it was all about how to deal with this north south access, how to do culturally, multiple readings of the map. I was very interested in the different traces which were happening in that city over many different centuries. It may be because of my upbringing. I was very engaged in deconstruction. I didn't want form and space in architecture to be smooth. That Berlin map invites resistance. And, because of that, I thought it is a space which would invite engagement. Because, I think if someone is not inclined to resist what is happening, then there is not necessarily an engagement, a cultural engagement happening. So, I think that my history was a good base for me in my work to create these kinds of projects, which in themselves were more meant to be works, which are exhibited, published for discourse. I was not going to build billion dollar projects and make them all easily consumable. The stuff was not easy to consume. 

[00:26:04] Nina: Can you speak a little bit more about what you mean about architecture not being smooth and how it invites resistance? There are listeners to this podcast who are not designers or architects. So, I just want to clarify that. And also an example of the traces. 

[00:26:20] Dagmar: Right. So, when I was younger, as an architectural student, we studied very often under this ideology of modernism. Everything was supposed to be functioning smoothly. For example, the Frankfurt kitchen. There was never a questioning of the role of the new housewife, now in this super, modern Frankfurt kitchen. It was never about the role of the woman or children or relationships or culture. It was all about how you move in that space so that you can be most effective. The Frankfurt kitchen was all about the housewive's effectiveness and using function as a way to save time and not like lingering around. So if you think about the Frankfurt kitchen, you're not hanging out, right? The kids are not in the Frankfurt kitchen. Nobody is there. In the United States, everybody was yelling from the open kitchen, down to the living room, watching TV, as they were cooking. That was not in Germany. Kitchen was in a box. It was super functional. The door was closed and cooking was going on. It was not a social thing. So, I thought the same in the city. Like, the freeways going right through the cities to be quickest from one to two and the streets systems, the way how buildings were built. I resisted that all the time. So, in my architecture, which were mostly urban design or large buildings, my goal was not that the path was the shortest, but the path was the most interesting or the path gave the most opportunities for conversations. My architecture was always more or less very bad in functioning. And, that was very conscious. 

[00:28:00] Nina: Conscious dysfunction. A lot of the impetus is really to generate conversations.

[00:28:04] Dagmar: Right. And, that's also something which I think reflected in the area which is important to me, that I became an architectural professor and it was all about discourse. It was all about coaching students to wake up and to talk to each other. I was very lucky that I taught a big basket of different cultures, in very good universities, so it was an incredibly interesting space to be in. My work, as well as the way I taught and coached my students, were always about creating very deep and very engaged conversations. 

[00:28:42] Nina: Interesting. Because, also everything that you've described growing up in the domestic sphere was a lack of discourse, a lack of engagement. 

[00:28:52] Dagmar: You're right. Lack of discourse. And that means also because lack of history.

[00:28:56] Nina: Silence.

[00:28:57] Dagmar: Absolute silence. 

[00:28:58] Nina: Do you think that's a generational thing amongst your peers?

[00:29:01] Dagmar: Well, I was very curious. I was searching, I was not very traditional. I was a rebel. I was always poking everybody all the time. In our generation, I think there was a lot of discussions going on, particularly when we became teenagers. That is more a German post-World War generation thing, I would say. Because, I can now look at my generation's children, and their discussion is different, but they are much less burdened. At the same time when they grew up in California, the first training they received in kindergarten is that they should not be discursive and critical and rebellious, but that they should, more or less, talk and speak smoothly, and not upset anybody else. So, there's only positive things which are exchanged, no particular engagement. And they should kind of say, what other people want to hear. 

[00:29:58] Nina: Your children here in the United States? 

[00:29:59] Dagmar: My children here in the United States. In the beginning they had an edgy situation in these kindergartens because they were not used to that, but they learned it very quickly that you learn to script your speech a lot more than what we were taught.

[00:30:14] Nina: You certainly had this desire for criticism, not accepting anything as face value. 

[00:30:20] Dagmar: I did. Because we experienced that and we were from this group where the things, if you really truly authentically speak about these history or experiences, they not very comfortable. Right. And so, therefore this idea that everything has to be smooth - that was not something I could do. I could see that that generation after me, they were very good in scripting their speech. 

[00:30:45] Nina: Yeah. Going back to the work that you were discussing, mapping Berlin and the competition that you were working on, the Prague National Library competition. Did you do that in a similar time period? 

[00:30:58] Dagmar: So, the Berlin mapping was somewhere in the beginning of the nineties, but the other project, which you also mentioned, the Berlin three city drawings, they were somewhere in the beginning of the eighties. It was the first exhibition they did, that was before the wall came down, an exhibition about the Berlin wall, or about Berlin, per se, as a space west Berlin, east Berlin, and so on. So, that drawing was a kind of researching all of these no man's land because Berlin had a lot of no man's land between the east and the west. So, those no men's lands were a big issue because that's where a lot of occupiers were, or where in the sixties and seventies these areas were often occupied by Western, of course not the Eastern people, and they created alternative societies in these areas. I was working with a good friend of mine, Ulli Hindrichsmeyer. We had a company together, and we proposed that this no man's land is the third Berlin because it doesn't belong to anybody. It was this idea of freedom of information in this area where we then did these drawings about an implosion of east and west imagery drawing. So that was early and we predicted that that freedom of 'no man' would create that freedom of discourse and would create a situation where east and west could come together again. 10 years later it was, but it was not when we did that project. 

[00:32:36] Nina: It was a kind of historical collage?

[00:32:38] Dagmar: Yeah. It had a collage of key imagery, but they were so abstracted that most people didn't recognize them. And, it was based on an interesting movie by Wim Wenders, my generation again, which was called Angels in Berlin, I think in English. The whole content of that movie was about these older people to find their house in this no man's land, because that's where they grew up, and it was all weed. There was a great scene, which is then the space which we use, which is this old man going with this angel to say, I'm not going to stop before I find the Potsdam Square, which now is this big development, but it was just a field of weed where they were trying to look for traces where these places might have been. It's a nice scene. It was a very interesting and important movie. So, that's a very old project, but later on in the nineties, I got very interested in national libraries and I was lucky that there were two big open worldwide competitions. One was the National Library of Copenhagen, and that was totally down my alley. We nearly won. That would have been a big change in my life. But it was so critical about cultural identity that they didn't dare. But overall it was an interesting argument by saying that the national library they built in 1905, was neo-classical, and Denmark at that point or a little bit earlier than that, they always copied everything, which was so-called south of the Alps. That was classical architecture and all that. Then suddenly in 1910 about, they realized that had no identity. Denmark was, in that sense, some kind of European unit and their culture they felt was erased. So, there was a great interest in their history, and that was viking history, which was then countered to the so-called classical Italian history and classicism. The Copenhagen main station, for example, looks like an upside down Viking boat. Foreigners love that building, but they don't know why it's so cool. So, what I then did with the National Library in Copenhagen, is that I used that neoclassical plan, and stretched it and then did a critical deconstructed copy of it, and then wrapping it with the identity of the Danish city life, and that was copper roofs. So, the library we proposed had this wrapping of folded copper. And in the National Library in Prague, Czech Republic, we got first prize in the first round, but there were five or four people got first prize. There for me, it was interesting to find these spaces for conversations. There are three towers, one is storage, one is reading. One is where the books are. So, you always had to pick up the books, and then go between those three towers through these bridges to then get to the other place. Again, it wasn't smooth. You had to walk. You had to go by people. The idea was that it was wrapped by this kind of cloth, and that cloth had something to do with Gehry's building there, which was related to, I think in English it's called Tin Drum. It's a German narrative where belonging for that child had to do with hiding under the mother's skirt and peeking out underneath the skirt to learn more about the domestic family history. So, it was then wrapped in this skirt where you peeked underneath in order to learn more about your identity.

[00:36:18] Nina: You were held in security.

[00:36:20] Dagmar: That was the idea. But inside there was this lively exchange hopefully going on. So, that was the second national library I did. The background of my architectural projects have a lot to do with these kinds of discourse about who we are, and how does architecture actually support it, smooth it out or erase it? I think architecture has a certain power ,to do that. But I was also interested in how a user appropriates that architecture and how engagement again, by being not smooth, invites critical appropriation by the user. I always felt that was very important.

[00:37:00] Nina: That sense of discomfort. What it solicits? 

[00:37:03] Dagmar: Yes. And then engagement, hopefully.

[00:37:06] Nina: And engagement, whatever it is. 

[00:37:08] Dagmar: Yeah. But also in a sense that it is a structure which invites that engagement instead of killing it. Right. So, you don't silence people, you don't make it smooth. Engagement should happen. I do feel that resistance is something which often is regarded as negative, but actually can be a very positive force.

[00:37:30] Nina: So, these themes repeat so much between all your projects, this desire for discourse, for engagement, for information, how you deconstruct space. You invite resistance, there's this question of cultural identity, but in the last two projects, you also take that whole deconstruction and you wrap it. You spoke about the roof, the copper wrapping; you spoke about the skirt of the mother, that security. This enveloping holds the deconstruction. It's almost a vision and hope. 

[00:38:04] Dagmar: Yes. That's interesting. 

[00:38:05] 

[00:38:05] Nina: This is Nina Friedman. And I'm speaking with Dagmar Richter, a German architect and US professor of architecture. We are speaking about the impact of being born in Germany, post World War II, as part of the generation granted the title of those with 'grace of late births' on her work, identity, and places she has lived. 

[00:38:31] I do want to jump to your more current interest in communal housing. 

[00:38:36] Dagmar: Yeah. That is a great interest of mine and it started when I was studying in Denmark because in the seventies, in Denmark, they started new housing co-ops. They were often organized by unions. Right? So there was a solidarity system, a home. It was the working class, but they belonged in that class. They were proud. There was a very proud organization. It was not everybody against anybody. It was the union representing them. They were a big cultural body and there was pride to it. There was a movement against suburbia, like a house and a garage. The next generation were not willing to go to suburbia. So, they made sure that they were all together, that there were common houses. They shared the spaces, large kitchen and washing centers and childcare in the middle, and it was always very walkable. I mean, Danes anyway didn't have cars, but cars were banned outside of these housing areas. I learned a lot about it. When I was done with studying architecture, I gave a lecture in German at a huge conference about the principles of co-op housing at that time. I started a book then, but kind of drifted to the United States where I couldn't find any of that kind of thing, then. They were in the older times, but it returned. So, about five years ago, I got really interested in that again, because I realized that this co-op housing became a new, interesting experience and a lot of projects, very interesting projects, which were all about creating your own family or in that sense, be creating your own identity in that group, because they didn't belong and they were people who were moving all over the world, and suddenly it became another kind of communal nest. And, I was very interested.

[00:40:20] Nina: Yes, and family structures have changed. 

[00:40:22] Dagmar: Yes. And also to be inclusive so that there are singles, and there's different kinds of couples, if there are couples, and combinations. Weirdly enough, Germany and Vienna became incredibly strong in the last five, ten years to create new co-op housing in the inner city. I was not interested in suburban. I wanted to know how we could change things in inner city development. There were quite a number of incredibly interesting projects Berlin often started by international housing exhibitions, which in Europe now is a trick to uproot the zoning and find out with experimental architecture and experimental urbanism, how you could come up with better and more alternative housing. My view nowadays is that it is kind of an interesting middle-class answer, which I think has been entirely forgotten, because we always have low-income housing and that is dismal maybe. And then you leave the middle class to fend for themselves and pay for a lot of stuff. Then, you have luxury skyscrapers where it's all enclosed and they have their own dog walk and their own roof terraces, and so-and-so, they don't have to confront with the lower classes. And the middle class I think in central Europe, was not interested in going to suburbia. And because that's the thing they only could afford, started inner city, large scale development. So, they're often 40 parties, 80 parties. Sometimes it's only 20, 30 parties, and they did start quite interesting, alternative projects. I'm developing a course about those kinds of housing concepts, which are also incredibly interesting in Vienna, which is starting this summer an international building exhibition. You can see all of these. I think they have built 20 or 30 co-op housing in the last two years. 

[00:42:13] Nina: You are currently engaged in a project in Berlin, which is about communal housing. 

[00:42:18] Dagmar: Yeah. I became interested in that group. I knew at least four or five of the members. I think there are 40 units in there, and I always followed them because they were one of my studies. It was the very young architectural company called June 14. I knew several of those people who were engaged in it. They had very interesting ideas about relationships between people and how to create community and, suddenly about three, four years ago, there was a big crisis. They nearly didn't survive because the building became way more expensive than they thought. I mean, what's new about that. So there were some people who got out and then I was called up by these friends. Hey, there's a unit available. And then I became part of the group, and the last meeting was on Friday and was the 'welcome to the 82nd meeting of our co-op housing'. So you could imagine. That was the final meeting. They all right now are moving in. I'm very excited. I will be going there tomorrow and I will be one of them. The architecture is super cold and it's very modern. The entire facade is glass, which is shocking. For me, it's much more about the group and than the interior, again, I'm already seeing myself, I'm going to build a nest in that concrete box. But it has very interesting plans and they're all interwoven, and you're always looking at your neighbors. It's quite an interesting project. 

[00:43:44] There's this idea about transparency. 

[00:43:46] Right. Yeah. So, everything's glass and you're sitting in an aquarium, in a glass box, and it's all folded back and forth. So, when you are in your living room, there's a little niche, and you look into the next living room to the right and to the left, because it's a little bit from L situation. You are always in the middle. 

[00:44:04] Nina: It'll be interesting to see this project in five years, how everybody has dealt with creating their own nests inside of this pure shell, and deals with privacy.

[00:44:16] Dagmar: Absolutely. Or not. I'm really very curious. I will try to document. I know many of them, so I want to document each of their units. And the interesting part is that those are all, if they're German like me, they've been all their life somewhere in Hong Kong, in Singapore, in New York. And there are many who are same-sex couples or singles, or they have young couples with children, which are heterosexual couples. Also the age range is quite interesting. I already can see now how they thinking about these units because everybody went like, yeah, it's kind of a raw shell. The two architects are Sam Chermayeff and Johanna Meyer-Grohbrugge. Sam grew up in the United States. His father is a Russian Jew and they had to flee, around second world war, or after. He is in partnership with Johanna, a German woman who he met, and all their aesthetic is about not being very homey, so everything is free floating. They hate cabinets. They want everything to be raw. It's super interesting. Members in that group might react to it differently, but we will see.

[00:45:30] Nina: Inclusivity and democracy is not always working the way you think it's going to work. It's devoid of any personality. It's devoid not even the word homeyness .It's devoid of any identity.

[00:45:41] Dagmar: Exactly. It has no resistance. 

[00:45:45] Nina: Exactly. You can layer things onto it, the way you want to, but even doing that becomes a kind of destruction. 

[00:45:53] Dagmar: Right. I'm really very, very interested in that particular kind of situation. I mean, I'm also studying a lot of other groups. That particular house is called Building Group Kufu 142. I will get very engaged and analyze it, I think a lot more thoroughly than they have thought about it, but I'm very interested how those kinds of dynamics play out.

[00:46:19] Nina: All of this is so interesting. Dagmar, I really want to thank you so much for your time today, and I'm very grateful for your honesty and contribution to what I think is a very important conversation. It's particularly important to me personally. I share with you some similar professional experiences, but I have lived an opposite cultural experience, as a Jewish woman growing up in the United States, surrounded by Holocaust survivors. We haven't spoken about that at all during this conversation, but it's been important for me to talk about this with you and to gain that understanding that you've shared today. And, I'm particularly moved by the impact of the post-war legacy that you have held, and your willingness to share it and learning how it has shaped your life's work. 

[00:47:14] Dagmar: Thank you, Nina, for inviting me. I've really enjoyed this conversation, of course. And, I must say I learned a lot. Your podcasts are so inspiring to me, and I hope I will listen to many in the future.

[00:47:28] Nina: Thank you so much, Dagmar. 

[00:47:29] Dear listeners. Thank you for being here. I invite you to reflect on what you've heard today and send your thoughts or stories. We would love to hear from you. Stay in touch on Facebook, Instagram, or on our website, thewhereing.com .Subscribe free to WHEREING wherever you get your podcasts, so that you are alerted when the next episode airs. WHEREING is a pro bono initiative of Dreamland Creative Projects, which provides architectural and interior design services for the places where we live, heal, age and inspire. If you wish to have a design consultation, visit dreamlandcreativeprojects.com or email: me:nina@dreamlandcreativeprojects.com. Until we meet again, goodbye from WHEREING.