During the GDR era, prefabricated housing was intended to alleviate the housing shortage. Now, serial construction could be reinvented.

This, too, is a story of the defunct GDR: Above all, the utopia of making the world a better place to live was what killed it. In the 1950s, the new socialist state recognized that housing was one of the most important things for people. For a prosperous future, housing had to be created. As much as possible, inexpensively, and modernly.

During the Honecker era, the goal was to build three million new apartments. The glorious urban revolution was supposed to be completed by 1990. That the entire state ran out of steam in that very year is a tragicomic paradox. The GDR collapsed economically, in part, because the immediate living space was provided too cheaply. Sixty percent of the apartments were state-owned, and rents were frozen at the 1936 level.

The German government has just promised a "construction boost" to tackle the housing shortage and, with it, ever-increasing rents. More speed in bureaucracy, fewer regulations in urban development plans, and rapid completion of new projects. Developers and architects are discussing with keen imagination what's possible.

If the serial production of housing is the top priority, then a shadow of the past could almost dissolve into pure light: the prefabricated building. What was once a concrete contradiction between utopian possibilities and social reality could experience a new boom. Completely different. Cheap, but with new materials. The forces of innovation don't have much time. The new regulations stipulated in Section 246e of the German Building Code are to be evaluated for their usefulness as early as 2029.

It's striking that, at the same time, there's an intense preoccupation with an unloved, yet sometimes romanticized, legacy. Suddenly, the topic of prefabricated housing is back in fashion. Three years ago, a brilliant two-volume monograph on industrial housing construction in the GDR was published, edited by architect Philipp Meuser. This fall, the exhibition "Exposed Concrete" in Chemnitz will take a look at prefabricated housing. Dresden will follow in February 2026 with the exhibition "Prefabricated East/West."

Potsdam, the city of the most striking contrasts, is already taking center stage. The old center has been filled with architectural confectionery, with replicas of Baroque grandeur. All around, one senses the old money of the beautiful villas and their prominently placed opposite, which is the subject of an exhibition at Das Minsk, one of the projects of SAP billionaire Hasso Plattner. "Residential Complex: Art and Life in a Prefabricated Building" is a profound and expansive exploration of an Eastern phenomenon. In their works, sixty artists question the reality of social housing that has become inscribed even in the physical appearance of the population.

"That from which one has been torn away, or from which one has tried to tear oneself away, remains a component of who one is," says exhibition curator Kito Nedo, quoting sociologist Didier Eribon and his book "Return to Reims." Is there such a thing as a genetic connection between the population and living spaces that were standardized and widespread? Looking at this cleverly curated exhibition, one would probably answer this question in the affirmative.

A melancholy pervades the images, objects, and installations. There is a search for home precisely where the creation of home was only possible through the individual's rebellion against the circumstances. From southern Saxony up to Stralsund, residential complexes based on Soviet models have been built on previously undeveloped land. Starting in 1950, these large housing projects were built for at least five thousand residents and included complete infrastructure.

Berlin-Marzahn, Erfurt-Roter Berg, Potsdam-Stern, Dresden-Gorbitz, Jena-Lobeda, and Halle-Neustadt are examples of future visions of an Eastern modernity that forgot to consider people's own visions. Modern prefabricated housing also existed under different conditions in West Germany, but for the GDR, the figures were dramatic. Twenty-five percent of the population lived in "prefabricated housing." In Rostock, the figure was as high as seventy percent, as sociologist Steffen Mau writes in his seminal study of the Lütten Klein residential district.

Living in a prefabricated building—which also existed in smaller units—meant reclaiming space and privatizing politics as much as possible. Childhoods spent in standardized seven square meters or adulthood in the living rooms of the P2 housing series, which became common from the 1960s onward, presented a challenge in maintaining one's dignity.

In this modern life, there is a great deal of domestic, almost anarchic kitsch. Until the 1980s, photographer Sibylle Bergemann captured the sofa corners of the P2, reflecting the spirit of the residents not seen in the picture. In this workers' and farmers' state, people dream of a lavishly patterned bourgeoisie. The few square meters can barely contain the expansive seating areas.

Uwe Pfeifer has repeatedly painted the large housing estates from the outside. His paintings have a subversive sobriety in their titles: "Concrete and Stone," "Antenna Roof," "Pedestrian Tunnel," and "Clothesline in the Fog." The prefabricated buildings are staggered down into the depths. Their minimal form stretches to the horizon, an urban megalomania, as if there were no world beyond. In an oil painting, Peter Herrmann lets nature and culture collide in an almost caricatural way. Stylized cows graze in front of an equally stylized apartment block, staring out of the picture, self-absorbed.

What shouldn't be overlooked: Rationalized prefabricated housing also represented progress and hope for the future. And for a long time, it was a symbol of expectations that had yet to be dashed. The stacked modules, with their heating and wet rooms, provided previously unheard-of comfort. Innovations like the P2 hatch between the living room and kitchen were greeted with as much enthusiasm as the prefabricated buildings themselves.

For good reasons, the Potsdam exhibition doesn't go beyond the historical intersection of German reunification. The topic of prefabricated housing has diversified rapidly since the 1990s. Many have been demolished or dismantled. Depending on the city or neighborhood, these residential machines have evolved into new ghettos or are now considered chic.

The former East Berlin center, where a strong desire for design led to representative buildings during the GDR era, is today an aesthetic monument to itself. Karl-Marx-Allee, lined with prefabricated buildings, retains its former name. Many prefabricated buildings in Berlin's city center are no longer recognizable as such, having been mercilessly spruced up and often brightly painted for the new real estate market.

If there is now a possible new boom in serial construction, then the GDR prefabricated housing is a relic. There were the gray years in the coal-laden landscapes of the East, where the WBS 70 model ushered in the final phase of standardized housing construction. The "new type of class society" propagated by Erich Honecker had become its own threat. In any case, the political elite of the state leadership did not live in what the construction companies produced cheaply and placed in the open fields.

Were the prefabricated buildings a place of alienation, or did something darkly human at times fully come to life here? In the baseball bat-wielding years of the post-reunification era, mobs lashed out violently against the weak here. The perpetrators of the right-wing terrorist National Socialist Underground (NSU), Uwe Mundlos, Uwe Böhnhardt, and Beate Zschäpe, were children of the prefabricated buildings. The exhibition in Potsdam commemorates this.

For his work "Gray Zone," artist Markus Draper takes up another historical detail. Cast zinc models of prefabricated buildings depict the escape routes of the ten West German RAF terrorists who had found a hideout in their eastern neighbor in the 1980s. They were arrested in the summer of 1990, among other places, in Berlin-Marzahn. This marked the end of a long-standing collaboration between the SED and the RAF. The anonymity of the "prefabricated buildings" had provided the terrorists with protection, allowing them to completely disappear into the crowd. The rest of the prefabricated building residents would probably have wished for the exact opposite.

The exhibition "Residential Complex. Art and Life in a Prefabricated Building" at the Haus Das Minsk in Potsdam is on display until February 8. The catalogue costs 30 euros.