Auschwitz – Architecture of Extermination

The design and architecture of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp followed a single logic: the forms of the buildings were entirely subordinated to their function as instruments of industrial genocide. Accordingly, the design and architecture of the facilities at Auschwitz put into practice the famous principle of ‘form follows function’. This formula was coined by Louis Sullivan, an American architect and one of the forefathers of modern architecture.
Many historians point to the seemingly contradictory connection between the Holocaust and the West’s processes of modernisation: Wolfgang Sofsky described the concentration camp as a place where ‘the destructive power of modern organisation’, much like on the battlefield, was tested for efficiency. Zygmunt Bauman’s thesis that ‘modern civilisation […] was certainly not the only, but most likely a necessary prerequisite for the Holocaust’ stands in a comparable context.
Tomasz Lewandowski’s photographs of the former Auschwitz concentration camp seem a world away from the mountainous landscape of Obersalzberg. Yet the two places are closely linked: the decisions taken here by Hitler and his confidants led to the massacres at Auschwitz. A detailed account of the connection between Obersalzberg and Auschwitz forms part of the permanent exhibition ‘Idyll and Crime’.
Tomasz Lewandowski: born in 1978 in Nysa, Poland; lives and works in Germany. As a documentary photographer, he focuses primarily on the sociological dimension of architecture.
Information on the accompanying programme can be found at www.obersalzberg.de

Eintrag zuletzt geändert am 08.05.2026