Halle Neustadt was designed as a self-sufficient solution to meet all the needs of the new working class.
Although not conceived as a utopia per se, it did follow some guidelines of utopian socialism. However, the deep flaws of the system reflect that utopias can work in theory. But from a broader perspective, utopias depend on many circumstances that can unbalance any carefully designed plan.

The word “UTOPIE” speaks to the desire to create a perfect society to maximise productivity. It reflects the city’s past, but also the challenges it faces in the present.

CONTEXT

Halle is a city in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, on the banks of the Saale River. It was part of the German Democratic Republic between 1949 and 1990.
In 1958, the socialist government of the GDR developed a plan to increase chemical industry production in the region. To this end, the comprehensive project for the construction of Halle-Neustadt, the "socialist city of chemical workers", was developed.

The architect Richard Paulick, a direct heir to the Bauhaus, where he worked closely with Walter Gropius, was in charge of carrying out the project.

SOCIALIST URBANISM

The urban model of Halle Neustadt is inherited from the designs of utopian socialists such as Owen, Fourier, or Cabet, later developed by Le Corbusier, and further developed by schools such as the Bauhaus.

The city is made up of huge, carefully arranged prefabricated concrete blocks (like Block 10, Germany's largest residential building). A new, self-contained city built from scratch, designed to house more than 90.000 inhabitants.

But the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 led to a dramatic rise in unemployment. Halle Neustadt became a shrinking city, its population falling by more than half in just two decades.

THE SUPPORT

The support chosen by Freiraum Gallerie is the result of a strategy developed by a committee of artists, architects and urban planners from the city. It seeks to connect two important areas of the city through the intervention of the access ramp to the Neustadter Passage. To do so, surveys and studies are carried out on the street, to obtain information on the different points of view and concerns of the residents of Halle Neustadt. The results were shared with us, for the development of the graphic proposal, with which we seek a comprehensive intervention of the area, placing special emphasis on the ramp, the most unique element of the entire space.

Support before the intervention

Support before the intervention

DESIGN

We decided to unfold all the elevations, including the ramp, to simplify the complexity of the space and generate a single flat canvas on which to work. Next, we wrote the word “UTOPIE” in triplicate, and placed it on the canvas. The word rotates as the canvas unfolds. The rhythms of repetition generated by the typography react harmoniously with the proposals of socialist Public Art, of a very abstract and geometric nature, very present in the city. Once the word fits the canvas, we “fold” it again, creating a composition of typographic elements. The work becomes almost abstract, not legible, but generates a skin that envelops the space uniformly and generates rhythmic patterns both on the facades and on the ramp, resulting from the repetition of the typographic anatomy.