Talks
Jochen Becker
Make Sense: The Atmospheres of Large Settlemnets and Urban Cultures
07 November 2025
At his talk ‘Make Sense. The atmospheres of large settlements and urban cultures’ Jochen Becker reports on architectural history and the work at nGbK station urbaner kulturen Hellersdorf: Most of the post-war New Towns all over the globe belong to the generation of Fordist, industrialised mass housing. These are environments that could create sensory deprivation, and frequently they are cultural pampas. The in the same way rightful as well as abusive critique on these housing estates has a history. Although almost forgotten, it started already in the decades after the war.
The “generation with a youth spent in empty city centres”, as the Dresden born artist Olaf Holzapfel wrote it once, could not and did not want to repeat the heroic modernism of the interwar period after the destruction caused by Shoah and genocides, bombing and the subsequent clearing of rubble. Technocratic post-war urban planning, according to my attempt to reinterpret post/modern voices and practices, was no longer in touch with this disruptive reality. With a focus on the radical mainstream Fordism of GDR urban production, this article explores some of the buried side issues and brings them back to the fore.
So, is the WBS 70 (Wohnungsbauserie 70, or Housing Construction Series 70) the equally successful and ultimately failed Ford T of industrialised GDR housing construction? Can a new perspective on the urban cultures of the (no longer quite so new) New Towns be gained in the sense of an alter-modernism? And can art and atmosphere as a form of sensuality be introduced into these barren landscapes?
This is one of the goals of the station urbaner kulturen, a social and artistic outpost of the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGBK), housed right in the middle of the large housing estate Berlin-Hellersdorf in the former East. With a program of events, exhibitions and interventions in public space, the station urbaner kulturen works since 2014 to counter the lack of culture, atmosphere, and reflection in this in parts dysfunctional as well as strictly functionalist district.
Jochen Becker (Berlin) works as author, curator and lecturer and is co-founder of metroZones | Center for Urban Affairs and the station urbaner kulturen/nGbK Hellersdorf. He curated Chinafrika. under construction (Graz, Leipzig, Weimar, Shenzhen, Nürnberg) and advised the relocation of the Düsseldorf Theater FFT, including the project City as Factory and Place Internationale (2017-22). Recently, the exhibition Mapping Along (Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, 2021) with metroZones and Helle Fabrik, Dunkelkammer Produktion (Scharaun Berlin, Kunstraum München, 2023) have been shown. At station, he curated exhibitions with f.e. Helga Paris/Ulrich Wüst, Arne Schmidt, Katharina Sieverding, Akinbode Akinbiyi/Elske Rosenfeld, or Bitter/Weber. Current: the research and exhibition project Robotron & Co (2023-202x). Becker is active in the Initiative Urbane Praxis, curated the SITUATION BERLIN congresses as well as the Glossary of Urban Practice and is part of the European New Towns, New Narratives research network.