Utopie Kulturforum

The Berlin Kulturforum is a built utopia. Born from ruins as a West Berlin counterpart to Museum Island, it is the gathering place not only of some of the most important cultural institutions of the city, housed in iconic modernist architecture, but also of countless unbuilt visions, designs, and blueprints that have grown in the wound of an injured city. The will to shape the future has always been instrumental at the Kulturforum, and, as construction begins on the Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts (Museum of the 20th Century), this continues to be the case today. Meanwhile, the question of whether the area truly serves as a cultural forum has not been answered definitively, and in fact exploring this question is one of the Kulturforum’s utopian projects.

The inquiry, informed by the architectural and ideational history of the Kulturforum, gives rise to new answers: in exhibitions, artistic interventions and city discussions, it has become the starting point for crossforum reflection about the utopian potential of the Kulturforum.