German Architecture Meets American Hip-Hop

The Central Library in Downtown Atlanta serves as the headquarters of the library system. Completed in 1980, it was the last building to be designed by Bauhaus-movement architect Marcel Breuer. The brutalist building, which is considered a masterpiece by many architectural experts, recently was celebrated in an event launching “Wunderbar Together,” a yearlong festival celebrating Germany’s close friendship to the United States.

Germany’s Urbanscreen, an internationally active design-studio for cross-disciplinary media installations, took on the challenge of mixing the German architecture with the modern era of this American city. Embedded in the pulsating atmosphere of downtown Atlanta, the Central Library is silhouetted against its metropolitan surroundings. The core idea was to establish a creative dialogue of an unusual kind: namely between the purist austerity of the building and the renowned hip-hop scene of Atlanta. The work combines clear graphics that process the Bauhaus design of the library’s interior and façade design, with video footage of dancers from Atlanta. In this way, minimalistic strength correlates with raw, uninhibited dance visuals, continuity interacts with flexibility and American hip-hop responds to German architecture.

urbanscreen, wunderbartogether, wikipedia