ABSTRACT
The available scholarship about the exhibitions of the Deutscher Werkbund often focuses on the design and construction of the housing estates or the professional dealings of the involved architects. Using the city of Breslau as example, this chapter explores historical exchanges and tensions of the interwar period in Central Europe by the development of the Wohnung und Werkraum Ausstellung (Apartment and Workroom Exhibition) in 1929 from the lenses of material culture and its role reproducing the discursive outcomes of the exhibition.
At the beginning of the 20th century, technological innovation dictated not only the pace of urban development in German cities but also the dissemination of new ideas and planning discourses beyond the country. The chapter aims to firstly understand the relation between urban planning in Breslau and the historical setting of the WuWA and secondly, to identify the implications of material culture amending the contents of the exhibition. Through this analysis, a reinterpretation of the permanent exhibition as an instrument to convey a more complex discourse beyond the objectives of the exhibition can be developed.
