CONNECT!

CITY + ARCHITECTURE + LANDSCAPE + WATER * PAST + FUTURE

Topic:

Berlin is different. It‘s - Patchwork - Breaks - Contradictions - Oversize - Underdog. It has a beauty that is not obvious. It is sometimes hard to take and it is a honeypot that is hard to leave. It is a city that gives hope for the acceptance of otherness.

Berlin is the city of freedom, that is its narrative - not only since the 90s - and that is still part of the city‘s DNA. But not only.

It has a longer history, a history with dark moments, a history with great transformations - and it has a present with pragmatic issues. Berlin has grown, the contradictions have become bigger, the people more, the available apartments for rent less, the rents higher, the cars fatter, the streets not. It wants bike lanes... or rather not? And it struggles in many places with the question of how to deal with its own history. Often it‘s easier to deal with a history that is far in the past. But how do you deal with a history that is nearby. How to continue to write the story? Berlin has a lot of issues - and it‘s a honeypot, and how to move in honey? Berlin‘s slow dance into the future - ballet through honey - that‘s our studio topic!

Task:

We will work on 4 different plots in Berlin. We will learn about the history of Berlin and about important transformations (e.g. Lenné, Hobrecht, etc.) in two lectures. We will learn in tasks to analyze, „read“ and decode the city using different tools (e.g. layer maps, mapping, historical maps, reading what exists and translating it into a written text, etc.).

We will analyze reference examples at the urban and architectural scale to learn from best practices for transformation projects. We will then develop the program from the analysis and train to develop the designs for architecture, city and nature in dialogue with each other to support a transformation of the city into biodiverse habitats. We will use different tools (e.g. sketching, pictograms, AI, writing and translating into spatial concepts). The aim is to develop an architecture that is in dialogue with its history and environment. To see architecture as part of an ever-changing urban fabric that has a history, that already tells a story. We will train how to weave the structure into it and how to continue writing the story in a new way - with new demands, needs and also visions. The analysis of one plot each will be group work. The design for the chosen plot will be individually. We will make a day excursion to Berlin to visit the plots. 

4 times Berlin:

1 Connect the Complexity! The entrée, Humboldthafen

2 Fill the density! The heart, Stadtmitte

3 Never forget - but don’t stop dreaming! The former border, Bernauer Straße

4 Discover the Obvious! The hidden arteries, Panke

How can we design architecture by reading and decoding the DNA of a city?