House of Culture and Education, Neubrandenburg

More than eighty per cent of Neubrandenburg's old town lay in ruins in 1945, and the centre was rebuilt between 1952 and the early 1960s. Iris Grund won the competition in 1959, aged twenty-six; construction began in 1963 and the centre opened in 1965 at a cost of thirteen million East German marks. Four wings of different bulk enclose a courtyard; the south side facing the market square is largely glazed, with a foyer and a 480-square-metre exhibition hall, while the windowless multi-purpose auditorium originally seated six hundred. Visual artists including Sieghard Dittner and Werner Schinko worked on the finishes, and in GDR times the building housed more than fifty clubs and study groups. The 56-metre tower on the Stargarder Straße, nicknamed the Kulturfinger, is Neubrandenburg's tallest structure after the Gothic Marienkirche. It was built without regard to the medieval street plan, and it narrowed the historic market square.