The city is more than just a conglomeration of houses and streets. It’s a living system that provides its inhabitants with the necessities of life. As a diverse meeting place, it offers space for communication, representation, and for impressing others. It’s a place many different people call home. The city is something that stands between us. It both connects and separates us.

With the exhibition Die lebende Stadt (The Living City), the German Museum of Technology is launching its theme of the year: City of the Future. Through the camera’s eye, the works playfully search for the city’s essence: what are the overarching principles of human life in the city? How does a planned city work? Where can alternative concepts of usage transform the planned into a different kind of experience?

With 71 photographs, the artists’ collective Cadavre Exquis takes visitors on a photographic journey. The images are part of a coherent work of art that was created during a period of six months in three different games of association. In the exhibition, visitors can follow these chains of aesthetic association and add to them, and in the process playfully rediscover their own idea of the city.