ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the signicance of Berlin’s International Building Exhibitions (IBA) of 1957 and 1984/87 as essential turning points of post-war modernism and post-modernism.
The anniversaries of these events and also the current preparations for future international planning exhibitions have produced a wealth of German language literature examining the origins, context and impact of the exhibitions, but publications in English looking back at the exhibitions have remained far less numerous and have generally focused on the contributions by the star architects involved (Bodenschatz and Polinna 2010). In the German as well as the English literature, certain aspects surrounding what was actually shown in Berlin have almost fallen into oblivion. Both exhibitions (1957 and 1984/87) were presented in a number of dierent locations; some of these are scarcely even mentioned; even among those mentioned, some displays have to date remained almost undocumented.
