Buildings on Standby: Stitching the Post-Socialist Cityscape. Buchvorstellung und Diskussion mit der Autorin Hendrikje Alpermann und dem Architekturkritiker Wolfgang Kil

Book presentation and discussion with author Hendrikje Alpermann and architecture critic Wolfgang Kil

Buildings on Standby describes the vacant high-rise slabs A-E in Halle-Neustadt as places of uncertain future, where the possibilities and uncertainties of urban planning after socialism are being wrestled with. For more than 20 years, four of the five high-rise buildings have been empty and remain on standby - in a state of future-oriented availability and negotiation space between shutdown and reactivation. At the interface of actor-network theory and ethnographic urban research, the study examines this state in its temporal, material and political dimensions. It shows that buildings on standby cost a lot of energy, harbor risks and become a bargaining chip for trust and responsibility.

Hendrikje Alpermann
Buildings on Standby. Stitching the Post-Socialist Cityscape
Adocs 2026

Hendrikje Alpermann studied ethnology in Leipzig, Halle (Saale) and Tbilisi as well as sociocultural studies at the European University Viadrina and the École d'Urbanisme de Paris. She is interested in everyday urban life and the processual entanglements of architecture, urban planning and society. In 2024, she co-directed the transdisciplinary festival "wohn_komplex" together with Sabine Strobler and Karoline Stegemann to mark the 60th anniversary of Halle-Neustadt.

Wolfgang Kil is an architecture critic and publicist, as well as an exhibition organizer (Plans and Dreams - Drawn in the GDR, Tchoban), with a focus on the architectural history of the GDR and Eastern Europe.