Großformen im Wohnungsbau – [erscheint im Kontext der Wanderausstellung Lernen von O. M. Ungers, Institut Architektur der Technischen Universität Berlin, 27. Oktober bis 9. Dezember 2006 sowie Ausstellung und Symposium CASA Veretigo der Technischen Universität Eindhoven (NL), 24. April bis 16. Mai 2007]

Already more than forty years passed, since Oswald Mathias Ungers published a small booklet in December 1966 at the Technical University of Berlin, at his Institut for Architectural Design VI, as number 5 of his 27 publications to architecture, briefly mentioned VzA 05, which is out of print for a long time: Großformen im Wohnungsbau (Megaforms in housing). It is containing his “Russian” lecture. Acting as Dean of the Department of Architecture from 1966 to 69 and as an ambitious architect as well, he had selected this subject on the occasion of his invitation to Moscow to reflect his experiences from practice and to discuss fundamental considerations for the future of urban living. The VzA 05 not only met a very disciplined arranged and pointed commentated medley of pictures of international projects from architecture and urban design of the 20. Century, but opens beyond that for the first time systematically the phenomenological principles of Megaform,- until today, a rarely explicitly discussed, virulent political topic.
In a central section this publication contains the second, contentwise unchanged edition of Großformen im Wohnungsbau. The illustrations shown in it were qualitatively improved, by renewed image processing of the originals from the Ungers archive in Cologne. This ” original core ” is framed in the beginning by original texts from Ungers, which are for the first time translated into english. 1967 Ungers published his specified thesis about Megaforms under the subitel thought on the project Ruhwaldpark – Gedanken zum Projekt Ruhwaldpark. Under the titel Form within the City there are the chapters: Notes on Megaform and The Problem of the quantity in Design as well as the translation of Form within the City done by Ungers himselve in November 1968 as introduction for the VzA 18, Ithaca N.Y.
The final contribution Megaform in der Stadt. Von OMU zu OMA tries to open further perspectives. The critical analysis and the comparative view of Ungers ” texts with Koolhaas ” Bigness, tries to generate a better understanding of Ungers ” thinking to current questions to (future) life in the city and also to give new impact for integration and a Culture of Congestion.