LIVING IN THE XXI CENTURY

SUITES OF THE MASTERS

Haut D�cor for hotels

INCONTRI Hard & Soft

GERMANY: THE ART OF CONSTRUCTION IN STONE

LINE-SCAPE

The garden harvests the forces of nature

19th Abitare il Tempo ( 16th-20th September 2004)

39th MARMOMACC (7th-10th October 2004)

Veronafiere �Marble Art Culture�

Continuing the synergy between Abitare il Tempo and Marmomacc on the use of stone materials in design and architecture, Veronafiere will put on an exhibition of particular current interest entitled:

GERMANY: THE ART OF CONSTRUCTION IN STONE

Exhibition of architecture, by Vincenzo Pavan

Veronafiere, 16th September - 7th October 2004

Exhibition Centre Pala Expo Veronafiere, 2nd floor

For nearly two decades Germany has taken an avant-garde role in the use of stone in architecture. The research and new experiences carried out in this field have involved both technical aspects of construction as well as the language of architecture. The remarkable symbolic-cultural value attributed to architecture is an opening, without parallel, to the contribution of international personalities in the vast undertaking of �new reconstruction� of the cities destroyed in the war. This has contributed to confirming, once again, the role of the international architectural workshop enjoyed by this country, in the decade prior to, and that following the fall of the wall, and the reunification of the country. Berlin in particular, recognised today as one of the international capitals of contemporary architecture, is at the centre of the debate on the relationship between traditional construction materials and a new architectural language. A debate which has brought to light unexplored potential and profound contradictions between the protagonists on numerous themes, amongst which the   �critical reconstruction� of the cities destroyed in the war, the architectural language oscillating between minimalism, a new monumentalism, free formal research, and permanence of  the typology, up to the interpretation of materials in an ideological sense between the �authoritarian� and the �democratic�. Even stone as a construction material, has become involved in the argument, but at the same time has also been the subject of extraordinary architectural experiments, which have demonstrated how this material can be interpreted in different keys. An interesting phase of research about a new �architecture in stone� has thus started, released from the ideological debate and aimed at its coherent interpretation in the various languages.

An exhibition will be set up based on these themes which will illustrate a selection of the best works in stone by the main protagonists of German architecture amongst whom: Bolles+ Wilson, von Gerkan-Marg and Partners, Kollhoff & Timmermann, H. Larsen, L�on-Wohlhage-Wernik, C. M�ckler, Ortner & Ortner, I.M. Pei, O.M. Ungers, Wandel-Hoefer-Lorch + Hirsch. A special section of the exhibition will be dedicated to some recent individual interventions on the reconstruction of Berlin, which are particularly significant due to the use of stone materials: Leipziger Platz and Potsdamer Platz-Lenn� Dreieck, important restoration works and the reconstruction of some squares.

During the 39th  Marmomacc, a conference called �The languages of Stone in the new German Architecture� will be held on the themes of this exhibition. The conference, which will be held on October 9th, intends to promote a debate addressed to an audience of Italian architects on the principal aspects of the culture of stone in recent architecture in Germany. Co-ordinated by Augusto Romano Burelli, historians, critics and experts of the differing orientations of German architecture involved in construction in stone, such as Julia Bolles, Hans Kollhoff, Petra Kahlfeld, Hilde L�on and Hans Stimmann, will take part.