“What happens to vacant buildings that are neither demolished nor renovated, but simply left unattended—decaying, and yet somehow still standing? This deceptively simple question animates Hendrike Alpermann’s study of urban transformation in Halle-Neustadt. Drawing on longstanding ethnographic fieldwork in the German city of Halle (Saale), Alpermann examines the liminal condition of four of the five Hochhausscheiben—modernist high-rise slabs originally built in the 1970s as workers’ and students’ dormitories in the socialist model district of Halle-Neustadt—that experienced prolonged periods of vacancy and suspended redevelopment.
(…) The book’s central analytic is the concept of “standby,” borrowed from the vocabulary of technology and expanded into a rich social-scientific framework. In the mode of standby, Alpermann argues, buildings occupy a condition of “in/activity”: they are neither fully on nor fully off, neither functional nor entirely abandoned. They continue to consume energy, generate relations, and make a future promise without clear paths to deliver it.”

Excerpt from the review by Maria Gunko.