Residential tower blocks made of prefabricated concrete slabs were built in many parts of the world during the second half of the 20th century, but this type of building was particularly popular in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), where it became known as the “Plattenbau.”
The cultural implications of the Plattenbau are so specifically German that the name for the prefab buildings is kept untranslated in the English title of the exhibition “Wohnkomplex: Art and Life in Plattenbau,” on show at the museum Das Minsk in Potsdam until February 8, 2026.
The exhibition explores the cultural legacy of the prefabricated buildings, “as a living space, as a symbol of social utopias, and as a projection of societal changes,” states the exhibition’s presentation. “The Plattenbau is not only viewed as architectural heritage, but also as a cultural space of resonance that raises questions about belonging, community, and memory.”
A 1971 painting by Uwe Pfeifer showing an passageway into a residential complex in Halle-NeustadtImage: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Foto: Thomas Kläber
Exhibition curator Kito Nedo, who was born in Leipzig in the 1970s — during “the peak time they were built,” as he says — only realized later how these housing complexes served as “a socialization environment” in his own life, he tells DW. Since so many people were housed in similar quarters, a large part of the German population share a “collective memory” that is reflected in some of the show’s artworks, he adds.
As the residential blocks remain a defining — and divisive — feature of urban landscapes in the former East Germany, the curator’s goal with the exhibition is to let the artworks speak for themselves, allowing visitors to revisit the many facets of the Plattenbau, all while keeping in mind that the residential complexes also served as the stage of “a painful transformation” triggered by German reunification.
Sibylle Bergemann explores in a series of photos the similarities and distinctions in the setup of Plattenbau living roomsImage: Nachlass Sibylle Bergemann/OSTKREUZ, Courtesy LOOCK, Berlin
Housing shortage: A never-ending crisis
Finding an affordable place to live in major cities “has been an issue of concern for at least 200 years,” points out the exhibition curator — and today, the housing crisis appears to be worsening in many parts of the world.
Housing shortage was definitely a major problem after World War II, which had left many cities destroyed by bombing raids, all while a large influx of German refugees from further east aggravated the situation.
Modernizing older buildings was very costly; the “Altbau” (or pre-war) apartments were heated with coal, often didn’t have hot running water, and the bathrooms were shared spaces outside the units.
Japanese photographer Seiichi Furuya documented his life in East Berlin in the 1980sImage: Courtesy Galerie Thomas Fischer © Seiichi Furuya, Foto: Christine Furuya-Gössler
As an alternative, the Socialist Unity Party’s Central Committee launched its Apartment Construction Program in October 1973, promising to solve the housing crisis within 20 years — and people were eager to gain access to one of the newly built apartments. The “Neubau” or new complexes were not only seen as a modern solution to providing housing to a large number of people, they were promoted by the East German state as a socialist utopia.
As part of this idealist vision, schools, kindergartens, commercial zones, cultural centers or youth clubs were integrated into the residential complexes. The rents, subsidized by the state, were kept extremely low. “Of course, economically it wasn’t viable,” notes Nedo.
‘A stage for painful transformation’
But then in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, “and suddenly, the utopia turned into a total dystopia,” he says.
Through Germany’s reunification, many of the state-owned industries in the GDR were dismantled, leading to a high rate of unemployment in the East’s urban clusters that had been developed for working-class families.
‘Grauzone’ by Markus Draper, 2015Image: Jens Ziehe
The growing despair manifested itself through extremism: The era became known as “the baseball bat years,” referring to an increase in attacks by neo-Nazis, who often carried them as weapons. The number of far-right violent crimes skyrocketed, climaxing with xenophobic riots in cities like Hoyerswerda and Rostock-Lichtenhagen.
This darker aspect of the Plattenbau’s legacy is also explored in the exhibition in Potsdam, including through an installation by Henrike Naumann (the artist has also been selected to represent Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2026). In her mixed-media installation, “Triangular Stories (Amnesia & Terror),” Naumann recreates two corners of rooms from Plattenbau apartments and depicts, through videos, two youth cliques of the early 1990s. One of them is a group of ravers getting high on drugs; in the other video, three neo-Nazis are hanging out — a staged version of the young people who would go on to found the National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist organization a few years later.
A part of the installation ‘Triangular Stories (Amnesia & Terror)’ by Henrike NaumannImage: Jens Ziehe
Art allowing personal interpretations
Altogether, curator Nedo aims to let the artworks speak for themselves. His selection focuses on art that expresses a certain ambivalence and allows different interpretations to be made.
Among them, Berlin artist Markus Draper recreates in “Grauzone” the skeletons of faceless prefabricated buildings. But they are not just random ones; his zinc casts are a reproduction of the apartment blocks in which RAF terrorists hid in the 1980s with the help of the Stasi.
The curator of the exhibition is also particularly moved by a series of paintings and drawings by artist Sabine Moritz. In them, she reproduces from memory details of her childhood in the 1970s in Lobeda, a prefabricated housing suburb of Jena. Even though the style of the drawings is childlike, her personal recollections are very precise, reflecting along the way the memories of many other people who lived in similar Plattenbau areas — after all, almost a quarter of the GDR’s total population lived at some point in these new housing complexes.
Sabine Moritz revisits the architecture of her youth from memoryImage: Jens Ziehe
After decades of being seen as a problematic remnant of the failures of the GDR, the Plattenbau is back in the spotlight, with various exhibitions revisiting the legacy of the era’s architecture, including the recent “Plans and Dreams — Drawn in the GDR” at the Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin, the Betonfestival in Chemnitz (September 27 – October 9) and “Prefabricated Building East / West” at the Stadt Museum Dresden (November 15, 2025 – August 14, 2026).
It’s not about celebrating “Ostalgie” — the nostalgia of the former East Germany — insists Nedo. But as Plattenbau neighborhoods have long been neglected and forgotten by large parts of the population, he sees such exhibitions as opportunities to draw attention to them, “and perhaps as a call to deal with them.”
Edited by: Brenda Haas
