Archinect - News

Nuremberg will stop Nazi rally grounds from further decay but won't restore them

2019-05-20T13:39:00-04:00

Should a modern democracy preserve an architecture and landscape designed to glorify the 20th century’s most infamous dictator? And, if the answer is yes, how? The city of Nuremberg has grappled with these questions for years. It is now about to embark on an €85m plan to conserve the vast Nazi party rally grounds designed by Adolf Hitler’s architect Albert Speer.

The enormous former Nazi party rally complex, with its Zeppelin Grandstand centerpiece, has been decaying for decades but—preserved and presented in the appropriate manner—could serve as a highly relevant educational landmark.

"We won’t rebuild, we won’t restore, but we will conserve," The Art Newspaper quotes Nuremberg’s chief culture official, Julia Lehner, saying. "It is an important witness to an era—it allows us to see how dictatorial regimes stage-manage themselves."

Architect, son of Hitler's architect, Albert Speer Jr., dies at 83

2017-09-19T12:38:00-04:00

Albert Speer Jr, the son of Adolf Hitler's chief architect who had his own accomplished architectural career but struggled to distance himself from his father's legacy, has died at the age of 83. The architecture firm he founded, Albert Speer + Partner GmbH, said Mr Speer died on Saturday in Frankfurt.

Living under the shadow of Albert Speer, Hitler's most famous architect and his dad

2017-05-08T13:08:00-04:00

[Albert] Speer, Jr., an eighty-two-year-old with a perennially serious expression and a fondness for energetic hand motions, is one of Germany’s best-known urban planners. He has risen to the top of the German planning world over the past fifty years, thanks to his reputation for sustainability and “human scale” architecture, and despite being the son of Hitler’s favorite architect [...] To his irritation, Speer, Sr., has long cast a shadow over his career.

"If Speer, Sr.,’s work was a reflection of the Third Reich’s values, Speer, Jr.,’s is a manifestation of Germany’s postwar identity: a country that has tried to atone for its past by becoming an international advocate for human rights and environmental sustainability, a country that is attempting to make up for its mistakes by becoming more thoughtful and humane (albeit while often advancing its own financial interests)."

Albert Speer talks about the Qatar World Cup and the search for sustainability

2015-01-21T18:33:00-05:00

Does it make sense for Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup? German architect Albert Speer, whose office is in charge of the project, says yes -- and is doing all he can to ensure sustainability. In a SPIEGEL interview, he says how.

Nuremberg to spend €70 million on re-building Nazi rally grounds

2013-09-05T18:50:00-04:00

Nuremberg plans to spend up to 70 million euro restoring the sprawling complex used by Adolf Hitler for his mass rallies, as debate continues in Germany over what to do with Nazi-era architecture. “This is a job of national importance, we cannot take it on alone,” said Ulrich Maly, the Social Democrat mayor of the Bavarian city, who added he would ask for federal funds to complete the project.

Hitler's Classical Architect

2013-05-24T16:43:00-04:00

The unbending axis of architectural apologetics made for Speer is a double one...This defense, of course, is exculpatory only if it fails to make any distinction within the field of this expression or to consider any integral relationship between form and function. The more outré defense of Speer insists that he is not simply tarred with modernism’s anti-classical brush but that he was an excellent architect, full stop.

In the June 10-17, 2013 edition of The Nation, Michael Sorkin asks Why is Léon Krier defending anew the work of the Third Reich’s master builder?

Hitler's Words Into Stone. Can architecture itself be fascist?

2013-04-28T00:06:00-04:00

Rather elegant," intoned the white-haired figure at the podium. He was speaking of Adolf Hitler's Reich Chancellery, designed in 1938 by Albert Speer. Up next on the screen was the Nuremberg Party Rally Grounds where brown-shirted Nazis paraded en masse. "I think it is really great architecture," said the lecturer. "You take off the swastikas, and you can admire it without feeling guilty."

As you might expect, "Audience members shifted awkwardly in their seats, and a few walked out to protest the remarks by Léon Krier, opening a conference on Berlin at the Yale School of Architecture in February." Anyone manage to actually be there for this, or have any follow-up?

Desert sands, soccer, sustainability and "symbolic capital"...

2012-06-01T23:55:00-04:00

In December 2009, at the "SportAccord" marketing trade show held in Denver, a pair of young Qataris walked up to the Albert Speer & Partners booth, flipped through the brochures and soon realized that the Frankfurt-based firm specialized in very large-scale projects with a focus on sustainability.

Alexander Smoltczyk interviewed Albert Speer Jr. in connection with Qatar's bid for the 2022 World Cup, designed by Speer's Frankfurt based firm. More interested in "intelligent cities" than simple architectural objects, the firm does and offers everything, from the big-picture concepts down to detailed plans. As for questions about patronage, politics and democracy Speer believes "Generally speaking, Germans should be able to work in countries with a German embassy." Additionally, Alexander writes that the current building race seen in the Gulf region is all about "symbolic capital", "sustainable power and sustainable spectacle".