In August 1933, the fourth meeting of CIAM (Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne) took place on board a ship that traveled from Marseille to Athens by way of the Aegean Islands. Among the members of the modernist avant-garde on board were Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Charlotte Perriand, and Josep Lluís Sert. Their voyage ended with a celebrated exhibition at the Athens Polytechnic, and the group drew up "The Charter of Athens," which defined a new approach to functionalism in city planning. Inspired by these events, Rainer Oldendorf collaborates with students and professors from Athens, Thessaly, Kassel, and Besançon to challenge the original Functional City exhibition with one of their own that questions the German DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung) standardizing approach to design.