Year Zero to Economic Miracle

Postwar West German architecture had to confront legacies from National Socialism and drastic privation that hampered construction. As industrial production recovered and a middle-class nation emerged, so too did a new architecture influenced by the American International Style model. At its center were Hans Schwippert and Sep Ruf. Schwippert, architect of the new Bonn parliament, worked to align economic redevelopment and a burgeoning consumer goods industry with design. Ruf, to whom Schwippert directed the commission for West Germany’s first World’s Fair pavilion, mastered architectural construction amidst both scarcity and largess.