Frankfurt-Römerberg
Jordi Viñals Terrer

It’s 10:00 am in Berlin. Manfred Schiedhelm opens the door of his studio to us. His 78 years defy the passage of time and it seems like yesterday when he and his colleagues of  Team X challenged all the urbanism of the Modern Movement.

In a devastated post-war Europe trying to rebuild its historical centres, where main cities were requiring a redefinition of their centrality and where the motor boom and post-imperialist consumerism mushroomed like a plague, the absurd mimesis of the Athens Charter encouraged by the old guard of CIAM was not offering solutions anymore.

In this historical frame, Manfred Schiedhelm joins the group Candilis-Josic-Woods in the project for the reconstruction of the historical centre of Frankfurt-Römerberg. Their ambitious and radical proposal was never built, but it is considered as a genuine declaration of Team X’s principles and the first implementation of the WEB concept in an urban context, anticipation of what later would be called MAT-BUILDINGS.

We are conscious that we are in front of a time machine able to bring us to the post-war Europe, to the Paris of Le Corbusier, to the ‘68 revolution and to a generation of architects who showed great commitment to society until Postmodernism silenced them.

Manfred Schiedhelm
Jordi Viñals y Xavier Bosch