The river Elbe defines almost everything about the valley of Dresden. Certainly where and how to build. Its extensive floodplains shape the historic city center on a scale that, even today, makes it the country’s fourth largest city. Water—its current whereabouts and its future seasonal encroachment on civilization—is the foundation the city’s ever-blackening sandstone monuments rest on. 

The historic downtown museums are particularly prone to feeling the stresses of water. Whereas my classmates merrily paddled down the gushing suburban streets during the 2002 “flood,” curators weren’t amused. Since then collections have moved upstairs, into newly built storage tubs that hover in midair as in Staab Architects’ reconstruction of the Albertinum. 

The new Archive of the Avant-Gardes on the eastern bank of the river follows the same model of storing valuables in the attic. Below the suspended concrete box in the former 18^th century customs building is a sizable if somewhat cavernous gallery that unboxes collector Egidio Marzona’s enormous flotsam of a century’s worth of art, objects and architectural ephemera. They all have in common a focus on the history of the future. For the second exhibition since its opening curator Hubertus Adam excavated architectural manifestos, zines, construction site photos and experimental designs of mostly predigital world modeling efforts. Aluminum tinted space age technophilia sits next to the esoteric escapism of magic mountains. The late 60s herald the age of architectural super groups, of DIY zines and globular carbuncles and the post apocalypse. On walls the color of tree frogs and open formwork concrete this assemblage creates a world in stark contrast to the ever-present languid nostalgia of a city famous for dreaming of its past.

You don’t necessarily need to come here to see the works on view. They are all widely published and are surely part of some TASCHEN book version of art history 101. But I doubt you will ever see them anywhere else in such a rejuvenating setting where they feel both utterly out of place and with renewed potency. If you are overwhelmed by the past, maybe a dose of future’s past can act as a corrective.

tf.