Time: April 4, 2011

Venues: The Aalto University and Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki and Åbo Akademi University, Turku

The historic center of Dresden was completely destroyed in 1945, close to the very end of World War II. The architectural heritage had been extinguished. Now after 66 years, the center of Dresden is still under rebuilding.

In his lecture, Dr. Sebastian Storz did not only look back at the rebuilding phase of Dresden, but also emphasized the questions that any urban reconstruction work has to deal with. These questions are linked to buildings and environments, and consider factors that give a modern building or an urban environment the quality to attract inhabitants.

Dr Sebastian Storz is an architect and a historian of architecture and Director of Forum für Baukultur, Dresden. He is also a founder member of MusAA, Museo Architettura Arte. MusAA is an architectural institute established in the earthquake area of L’Aquila, Italy, by a German-Italian cooperation project to help with future reconstruction work.