The exhibition Ingeborg Küller: Poems of Spaces and Colours is a retrospective of the work of the German architect, artist, and educator whose career became a symbol of overcoming systemic barriers in the architectural profession.

The exhibition presents original hand-drawn architectural drawings, watercolours where colour is used as a structural element, models demonstrating attention to scale and light, as well as archival photographs of completed buildings.

Although this took place in the very heart of the Western world — West Berlin, a city with a strong academic tradition — architecture remained predominantly male-dominated. Women had not only to prove their competence but also to fight for the right to be heard and to shape urban space as equals.

Küller became the first woman to receive a professorship in architecture at the University of Technology and Design in Berlin in 1971, an institutional breakthrough. Her teaching career spanned over three decades. During this time, she shaped a generation of architects capable of thinking of space as a cultural statement and of seeing the social, psychological, and cultural dimensions of architecture.

A Biography That Began with Resistance

Ingeborg Küller was born on April 12, 1943, in Cologne, in the midst of World War II. In 1962, she enrolled at the Berlin School of Architecture, where she was one of the few women in her class.

Her 1967 diploma project, dedicated to the reconstruction of a destroyed Berlin neighborhood, already revealed a humanistic approach — restoring the city not just as a collection of buildings but as a space for living and communication.

In the 1970s, Küller began teaching, facing institutional skepticism and a lack of female role models. Her lectures were known for their philosophical depth: she treated architecture as a language through which society expresses its values, discussing the role of colour, light, scale, and proportion in the perception of space.

In the 1980s, she became actively involved in urban planning debates in Berlin, opposing aggressive modernization and advocating for the preservation of neighborhood identities.

Key Projects and Concepts

From 1998 to 2006, Küller realized her largest project — a museum complex in Mannheim. It included exhibition halls, educational spaces, media centers, and public areas. This was not just an architectural object but a spatial manifesto.

The project did not seek to create a striking visual dominance. Instead, it offered users clarity, scale, light, and choice. Küller treated space as a system of relationships: between person and city, between body and wall, between light and movement.

Every element of the complex — from the configuration of the entrance group to the rhythm of the windows — was designed with the precision usually attributed to engineers, yet with a softness rarely allowed by architects.

Here her signature style emerged: a combination of strict logic and almost watercolor-like plasticity. She did not shy away from colour — she used it as a navigational tool. She did not avoid large forms — but always subordinated them to the human body.

The museum complex became not only an architectural achievement but also a pedagogical instrument. It showed students how to design without rigidity, build without aggression, and structure space without losing intuition.

Küller did not simply construct a building — she set the tone for an entire generation of architects. This project embodied her philosophy: space must be functional, intuitive, tactile, and emotionally comprehensible. Küller’s buildings do not overwhelm the human being — they invite interaction.

The exhibition presents original hand-drawn architectural drawings, watercolours where colour becomes a structural element, models demonstrating attention to scale and light, and archival photographs of completed buildings. Special attention is given to her early experiments with modular systems and projects where natural light is used as a material in architecture.

Among her other notable works is the South German Radio Studio in Mannheim (1983–1989), located in front of the museum she designed — a project in which Küller integrated minimalist forms with bright colour accents, using modular systems for flexible spatial organization.

In January 2020, the State Museum of Technology and Work, the radio studio building, and the surrounding park (designed by Dirk Jürgen Zilling) were declared cultural monuments and included in the official list of architectural and artistic heritage sites.

Küller as an Educator

Küller’s teaching career lasted from 1971 to 2005. She introduced new teaching methodologies: urban environment analysis, project seminars with real clients, and discussions on the social functions of architecture.

Her courses covered urban scale, the psychology of spatial perception, and inclusive design. Dozens of her students now work across Europe. Many call her a mentor who taught them to see architecture not as form but as relation, not as object but as interaction between human and space.

She emphasized the importance of a “female gaze” in architecture — not as a biological category but as a way of seeing the world through empathy and social responsibility.

Dialogue with Lygia Clark: Art as Space

Interestingly, just a few kilometers from the Museum for Architectural Drawing, the Neue Nationalgalerie is hosting a retrospective of Lygia Clark — the Brazilian artist and architect whose practice intersected with Neo-Concrete art and body therapy.

Her famous Bichos — movable sculptures that viewers can transform — became symbols of rejecting authoritarian form in favor of co-creation and experience.

In this context, Küller’s exhibition gains an additional layer of meaning: both artists work with space, but in different ways.

• Küller — through structure, scale, and light.
• Clark — through the body and sensation.

Both are women, both pioneers, both canon-breakers.

This autumn in Berlin — a city with a complex architectural history — became the ideal stage for the unexpected encounter of two female voices.

At the Sergey Choban Museum — Küller’s precise yet poetic architecture.
At the Neue Nationalgalerie — Clark’s radical, bodily art.

Together, they create a space where the female position is not merely heard — it shapes the city, its image, and its sensations. They show that their architecture can be an act of resistance and a cultural statement.