a monographic exhibition
29 oct. – 30 nov. 2008, MNAC – galeria ¾, Bucharest National Theatre
The exhibition aimed to make known the works of an exceptional architect, but far too little known. Rudolf Fränkel was born and worked early in Germany. In 1933, following the Nazi, he emigrated and settled in Bucharest, from where he emigrated again to England in 1937.
After the war, he finally settled in the United States. The exhibition had three sections: the first, dedicated to Fränkel’s works in general, with parallels between his activity in Germany and that in Romania. The main section covered the most important work in Berlin, the Atlantic garden-quarter, as well as its restoration by bfstudio-Architekten office – a model of urban revitalization and resurrection of a metropolitan spirit. A vital model for a city such as Bucharest, whose exceptional modernist heritage, fully ignored by the society and cultural elites, is to be irreparably damaged. The third illustrated the progress of Fränkel’s works in the last 70 years. The photographic reading of Iosif Kiralyi goes beyond the documentary aim, reforming the greatness and the decline of the modernist dream in Bucharest.
Organizers: bfstudio-Architekten in Berlin and Goethe Institute at Bucharest with Zeppelin team
