International Building Exhibition

An international building exhibition is not an exhibition in the traditional sense. The visitors do not expect pictures in a museum or display stands in an exhibition hall. The IBA exhibits are or will become built reality.

Saxony-Anhalt follows famous precedents with the IBA Urban Redevelopment 2010: The tradition of the building exhibition, which has often provided impetus for progress in planning and construction, dates back to the early 20th century. Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt (1901) and the Weißenhofsiedlung Stuttgart (1927) are reminders of the Neuen Bauen (New Architecture) movement. The 1957 Interbau exhibition presented the “city of tomorrow” in the Hansaviertel district in West Berlin. In the eighties, the IBA Berlin promoted a cautious programme of urban regeneration. In the nineties, the IBA Emscher Park raised awareness of the redevelopment of industrial brownfields in the Ruhr Area.

In addition to the IBA Urban Redevelopment Saxony-Anhalt 2010, there are two other international building exhibitions currently being held in Germany: In Lausitz, the IBA Fürst-Pückler-Land will attend to the structural and landscape transformation of a former lignite mining region until 2010. And the IBA Hamburg will work until 2013 in the south of the Hanseatic town on new opportunities for this metropolis.

The IBA Urban Redevelopment 2010 is the first building exhibition to focus on a whole Federal State.