In the 1980s, a specifically East German engagement with postmodernism developed in the GDR, even though it was not allowed to be called that there. Its protagonists belonged to a bohemian subculture that emerged in the shadow of a repressive state that was increasingly losing authority.
One of them was the architect Michael Kny. Within the collective led by Wolf-Rüdiger Eisentraut, he designed, together with his partner Thomas Weber, several buildings for the new centre of Marzahn in the 1980s. Within typified construction, they sought their own forms and, through unusual combinations of industrially manufactured components, deviated from the standard GDR buildings.
Kny also became the model for Peter Kahane's DEFA feature film Die Architekten (1989/90). The film tells of a young architect whose large project fails due to bureaucracy and economic constraints, and follows the various phases of this failure right into his private life. The film is exemplary of the crisis of GDR construction and shows, in striking images, a city between Plattenbau metropolis and bohemian neighbourhood amid a declining GDR.