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© Foto: Moritz Bernoully
Exhibition
MÄRKLIN MODERNISM – From Architecture to Assembly Kit and Back Again
19 May 2018 – 9 Sep 2018
Address
- Schaumainkai 43
- Frankfurt
Hesse - 60596
- Germany
Germans are surprisingly modern when it comes to their basement workshops – in the model railway sets of the “Miracle on the Rhine” era, architecture was more than merely a backdrop.
About
Here the flying roof, glass dome and grid-like facade were part and parcel of the urban landscape. The exhibition will be the first to show just how enthusiastic about architecture the supposedly philistine model railway builders really were.
Everyone could afford a “Villa in the Ticino” back then – for 4.75 Deutschmarks, you could get a 1:87 scale model. This was modeled on an actual residential house on the St Gotthard Pass, which doubly inspired the Faller brothers in 1961. They had a similar villa built at the company headquarters in Gütenbach and in parallel developed an injection-molded kit of the building. Curious stories also surround the glass tower restaurant, an embattled town church and a postmodern high-rise.
The DAM and moderneREGION AL are presenting selected original postwar Modernist model construction kits. They are juxtaposed to their architectural role models in the form of large-format photographs by Hagen Stier. Two model railway sets bring movement to modern cityscapes and a film by Otto Schweitzer and C. Julius Reinsberg, specially produced for the exhibition, will also be on view.
