The postwar era was a time of new beginnings, new interpretations, and experimentation even in the Ruhr, Germany’s largest industrial and urban region. It was also a time of economic growth, which became manifest in urban planning and architecture. Many of the formerly prominent postwar buildings have been torn down or are slated for demolition. However, the utopian vision and material qualities of those structures are kept alive by archives.

In the context of the collaborative teaching project Verschwindend? (Disappearing?), university students of the TU Dortmund scoured the holdings of Baukunstarchiv NRW for archival records of postwar buildings that have disappeared or were never built, creating artistic models based on their findings.