HOW SOON IS NOW – an exhibition by a group of 12 Berlin-based studios of architects, designers and engineers – revisits some themes of the legendary exhibition This Is Tomorrow held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1956.

Given today’s range of contemporary social, economic and ecological issues in combination with the acceleration of technological change, we are positioned in an inclusive and complex time. If yesterday’s tomorrow is not today, how soon is now? What values and possibilities can we imagine with a more speculative approach that is unburdened by the constraints of everyday practice? The exhibition will discuss – through spatial interventions and manifestos – what today’s sensibilities and needs might be and where they might be leading. Speculating in antagonistic collaboration HOW SOON IS NOW – initiated by Frank Barkow, Arno Brandlhuber and Sam Chermayeff – sets up a programme for the future.

6,50€/m2-Apartment: Modified for HOW SOON IS NOW and based on the „housing subsidy provisions in Berlin in 2014 (WFB 2014)“, VierRichtungsModulDiagonal (FourDirectionalModuleDiagonal) is created through a volume of rope tensions by Arno Brandlhuber, Alexander Görg, Andrijana Ivanda & Caspar Viereckel. The provisions of 2014 stipulated a flat module of 56.5 square meters. For the exhibition, the modules are turned against one another, so that they cross not perpendicularly, but diagonally, juxtaposed independently of the orientation of the plot itself. The „6,50/m2- Apartment“ illuminates the possibilities of an architecturally-challenging living and working space within a small space on two floors, for the rental price of a mere â‚ 6.50 per square meters. The principle was developed as a tool for sustainable construction.