Installation view, 162 von 172 Häusern stehen an der Hauptstraße…,
Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, 2005


From 1938 to 1958, the Danish state offered cheap loans to people with low incomes and little equity in order to allow them to build their own homes. A total of about 25,000 houses were built in twenty years. In 1941, Akademisk Arkitektforening (Academic Architects Union) in Copenhagen held a competition for small houses which could be built within the financial and legal frameworks of the program. The purpose of the competition was to explore the possibilities and to point out the importance of the architectural aspects, even in the case of these very modest houses. The catalogue, Smaa Huse med Statslaan (Small Houses with a State Loan), was published after the competition and contains 56 suggestions for small and inexpensive houses in the city and the countryside.
The double slide projection juxtaposes isolated text excerpts with the standardized sections and axonometric drawings from the competition catalogue. The selected texts for the projection describe the architectural and spatial qualities and ideas behind the projects, and thereby also point out the social structures inscribed in the architecture.


2 slide projections, 162 slides (German / English), approx. 15 min.
Translation: Dave Duchin, Barbara Zorman