Jakobsplan – Under Construction

Anna Perepechai

2018-2020  — Weimar, Germany

About this series

An ongoing project which gives a photographic insight into the unperceived and collective art of the construction site. Photographed during the renovation of Weimar’s biggest student dormitory Jakobsplan*, it shows intermediate stands from the construction process.

An architectural object is planned by many people and is ultimately created by the hands of the construction workers. With materials, they shape the forms of the construction site and leave their traces on all layers of the building, including the concrete walls. It makes the construction site the work of an art collective, which remains hidden by the outside of the fence for unfamiliar eyes. The massive concrete walls are preserved by completing the last construction phases. If the building is not going to be completely renovated in the future, these walls may never be visible again. When the last construction worker leaves the building site, the transformation phase of the building stops and a new stage begins.

*Jakobsplan student dormitory is one of the most discussed buildings of post-war socialist heritage in Weimar, Germany. Its construction was completed in 1972 as an architectural response to the preserved ensemble of the former Gauforum (an official Nazi Party seat complex, which was supposed to symbolize a center of power in the Third Reich) based on plans by Anita Bach, the first female GDR architecture professor. Jakobsplan has been undergoing extensive renovation since January 2018. Completion is scheduled for mid-2020.

Photographer: Anna Perepechai
Nationality: Ukrainian
Based in: Weimar, Germany
Website: annaperepechai.com
Instagram: @annachai

Anna Perepechai is a German-based visual artist and former journalist born in 1989 in Poltava, Ukraine. Her work deals with socio-political issues and transformations, especially in post-Soviet societies, as well as in public and private spaces. Interested in the analog process when photography comes to the foreground as an object itself, she also works with experimental, camera-less produced images.