Post-Oil City / History of the Future of the City

The exhibition will be opened by: Ernst Gruber / ARCH+
The vernissage will feature: Angelika Eder (Director of the Cultural Program) / Goethe-Institut, Thilo Fuchs (design and implementation of the exhibition), Simona Kopřivová / Goethe-Institut


At a time when more than half of the world's population lives in cities, proposals for solutions to deal with the consequences of climate change and the predictable end of fossil fuels must begin with urban issues. The exhibition "Post-Oil City - The History of the Future City" presents innovative projects in Asia, Africa, and America, along with a supporting catalog, that address current questions: how will cities change after the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies? What effects do renewable energies have on urban systems, sustainability policies, and mobility?
"Post-Oil City" deals with both the future and the past. The subtitle of the exhibition "The History of the Future City" suggests this connection: every planning for the future builds on past visions. To illustrate this, we juxtaposed 11 current and 9 reference projects that represent contemporary and historical planning in the fields of sustainability, urban operations, and urban systems. It is evident that today’s visions and development studies build on the urban utopias of modernity. Many proposals for solving urban issues related to transportation or waste from the mid-20th century are once again being considered, further explored, and put into practice today. Climate change, the finiteness of fossil energy resources, and financial and systemic crises are transforming new urban planning into experimental laboratories that reflect not only ecological but also social changes. Alongside large-scale construction projects like Masdar (Abu Dhabi), Xeritown (Dubai), or the NEST project in Ethiopia, plans to transform existing structures are also presented, such as the public concept of local transportation in the center of Curitiba, the renaturalization of New York's High Line, or the network project for electric cars with interchangeable batteries "Better Place," which is currently being introduced in Israel. The leading office in urban research, Raoul Bunschoten and CHORA, is developing a cross-border project for Chinese and Taiwanese cities in the Taiwan Strait that focuses on urban construction and energy supply. Last but not least, we see how oral traditional craftsmanship knowledge in India can be translated into contemporary, regionally rooted architectural language, thereby ensuring future planning that is beneficial.
Projects are accompanied by a range of animations and films that highlight certain aspects of the planning and explain them in depth.
Although the projects presented in the exhibition differ in methods and scope, they have something important in common: they illustrate exemplary connections between fiction, innovation, and flexible thinking, which we urgently need to shape our cities and planet for a sustainable future.
The exhibition Post-Oil City / The History of the Future City, prepared by the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) in collaboration with the magazine for architecture and urban exhibition ARCH+, is presented in Ostrava by the Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava, a contributory organization of the Moravian-Silesian region, together with SPOK - Society for Ostrava Culture, with the support of the Goethe-Institut.

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Curators: Nikolaus Kuhnert and Anh-Linh Ngo / ARCH+
Curators in Ostrava: Tadeáš Goryczka and Jaroslav Němec / SPOK
Responsible for the project: Elke aus dem Moore / ifa
Editorial and curatorial team ARCH+: Christian Berkes, Anna Birkefeld, Steve Danesch, Cornelia Escher, Polina Goldberg, Ernst Gruber, Christina Lenart, Elizaveta Mosina, Nicole Opel, and Dorit Schneider
Exhibition team Gallery ifa, Stuttgart: Iris Lenz, Stefanie Alber, Valérie Hammerbacher
Planning and organization: Carola Bodenmüller / ifa; Anh-Linh Ngo, Nicole Opel / ARCH+
Design and implementation of the exhibition: Thilo Fuchs - TATIN Scoping Complexity
Concept of the English catalog: Mike Meiré (Art Director), Tim Giesen and Tobias Tschense (design)
Concept of the Czech catalog: Tadeáš Goryczka and Jaroslav Němec / SPOK
Translation from German: Radovan Charvát

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Author profiles:

Ernst Gruber studied architecture in Canterbury, Weimar, and Vienna. From 2008 to 2010, he was an editor of the architecture and urban construction magazine ARCH+ (Urban Age Sao Paulo, IBA Hamburg, Post-Oil City). Together with architects Christina Lenart and Michael Klein, he is a recipient of the Hungarian award Europan 10. Since 2010, he has been an active board member of the Collective Housing Initiative in Vienna, on which topic he also publishes. He lives and works in Vienna.

Nikolaus Kuhnert (*1939) is an architect and publisher and the editor-in-chief of the magazine ARCH+. He studied architecture and painting in Berlin and worked, among others, with Hans Scharoun. In 1978, he graduated on the topic "Social Elements of Architecture: Type and Concept of Type in the Context of Rational Architecture." From 1972 to 1983, he was an assistant at the Department of Planning Theory at RWTH Aachen University. Since 1975, he has been an editor, and since 1983 (together with Sabina Kraft and Günther Uhlig), he has been the publisher of the magazine ARCH+. Since 1989, he has led the editorial group of ARCH+ in Berlin. In addition to editorial work, he has conceptualized and organized various symposia, including the symposium Berlinmodell Industriekultur (Berlin Model of Industrial Culture, 1988) with Otl Aicher. He was a member of the curatorial board of the initiative project Shrinking Cities (2002-2006) of the Cultural Federal Foundation to explore the phenomenon of shrinking cities, and until 2010, he was in the advisory board of the Goethe-Institut. In 2010, he co-curated the exhibition Post-Oil City (ifa gallery in Stuttgart and Berlin) with Anh-Linh Ngo, which, after successful stops in Stuttgart, Berlin, Vienna, Alsdorf, and Zurich, was taken into the international exhibition program of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations and has since been presented around the world over the next five years. For his work as a publisher and editor of ARCH+, Nikolaus Kuhnert was awarded the Erich Schelling Architecture Prize in 1996 for his contributions to architecture theory.

Anh-Linh Ngo (*1974) studied architecture at RWTH Aachen University and as a DAAD scholar at the University of Newcastle in England. Until 2003, he worked at RWTH Aachen as a research assistant in teaching and research in architectural theories. Since 2001, he has been an editor of the magazine ARCH+ and has been leading its Berlin editorial team with Nikolaus Kuhnert since 2003. From 2003 to 2005, as part of the Shrinking Cities project, he managed the implementation and publication of the international competition Shrinking Cities - Re-inventing Urbanism. In 2004/5, he participated as a critic in the pan-European architectural exhibition Wonderland. From 2006 to 2007, he was one of the curators of the exhibition project and accompanying events titled The Making of Your Magazines, which ARCH+ participated in within the documentary project Documenta 12. Since 2009, Anh-Linh Ngo has been involved in various lectures and seminars Raumproduktion der Berliner Republik (Spatial Production in Berlin), organized by the Academy c/o. From 2009 to 2010, he was one of the curators of the exhibition Post-Oil City in collaboration with the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa). In 2010, he initiated several events and publications ARCH+ features to support young architects and theorists. Since 2010, he has been a member of the advisory board of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations.