Andrea Pichl

Dogmen

Yesterday’s Utilitarian Architecture as It Appears Today

Andrea Pichl’s (b. Berlin; lives and works in Berlin) work turns the spotlight on the design vocabulary of the everyday world, in its historic and contemporary guises. She employs a range of media including collages, photographs, installations, and drawings to develop her creative interpretation, to which an engagement with theories of design and art adds depth.

The publication, released in conjunction with the exhibition at the Schwartzsche Villa, Berlin is dedicated to the so-called “Behelfsheim” (“makeshift home”). In 1943, the Reich Commissioner for Social Housing called for the construction of standardized miniature homes out of available materials to provide temporary shelter for “individuals affected by the air war.” Andrea Pichl probes this historic conception of residential living while also examining the individual appearance of the homes today; her installation surveys the ways contemporary residents of the “makeshift homes” in Wilhelmshaven and East and West Berlin have adapted them to their needs.

The catalogue also contains a set of drawings from Pichl’s series Stasizentrale, based on the artist’s photographs of interiors at the former East German security service’s headquarters in Berlin-Lichtenberg. With essays by Ulrike Kremeier and Christine Nippe.