raumlabor » The City as a Sphere for Action

The City as a Sphere for Action

As part of the OSTHANG PROJECT, Architektursommer Rhein-Main 2014

The Symposium at the end of the Osthang Project Summer School placed the recently completed Osthang campus into a larger context. The “functional change” of public space has evolved to become a key issue in architecture and urban planning discourse over the past 20 years. Therefore the citizens of Darmstadt – along with the participants of the Summer School and international experts – were invited to search for the potentials of open, social spaces and the alternative planning and building practice.

The transformation of the public space has become a critical theme in the discourse of architecture and urban planning over the last twenty years. It is in public space, where the altered work and living patterns of post-industrial society are reflected. While the digitalisation and virtualisation of public life have rendered the public space less important as a location for the exchange of goods and information, the pluralisation of our society is leading to a multiplication of lifestyles and needs, which creates new specifications and desires for the design of the public realm. Due to ubiquitous mobile communication the borders between private and public spaces are blurring. The expiring welfare state, with it’s the socio-economical challenges, cannot fulfil the diverse needs that the increasing privatization and
commercialization of the public space fosters.

These socio-cultural and economic changes have led to new demands, but also to new possibilities,which in many cases have created new forms of appropriating and using public spaces. Temporary, informal and intermediate uses, appropriation initiatives and experimental design-and-build projects have arisen from the need for new urban spaces, globally prompting the development of a new experimental realm of urban possibilities. The public space has become a platform upon which societal participation is being renegotiated and new ideas of community are being constructed and tested. All at once, these new approaches offer a wider opening for urban and spatial production for a greater diversity of actors. This is an urban development based on urban use, strengthening of the counter poles in the monetary dynamic of utilization and application that characterize our late capitalist society.

Thursday 24.07.2014, 10-21h
New Collective Spaces // Process Based Planning Strategies
The first day of the Symposium focuses on new emancipatory urban practices in relation to city planning. Central questions for the days’ discussions include: are we still able to imagine a better future society, better places and better cities? What is the meaning of public space for our imagination of how we want to live together in our societies? Which are the methods to generate real participation and include different user groups into development of our common spaces. How can we plan in open processes? How can we integrate bottom up strategies into the administrative and political realities of our cities?

SPEAKERS: Nikolaus Heiss (Darmstadt), Astrid Schmeing (Darmstadt), Martin Kaltwasser (Berlin), Ana Méndez de Andés (Madrid), Mauricio Corbalan, m7red (Buenos Aires), Bernd Kniess (Hamburg), Raoul Bunschoten, Chora (London), Teleinternetcafé (Berlin), Markus Bader, raumlaborberlin (Berlin), Dennis Crompton, Archigram (London)
DINNER TALK: Collectif Etc (Strasbourg)

Moderation by Jan Liesegang and Christian Holl, Inari Virkkala
Graphic documentation by Thomas Rustemeyer

Friday 25.07.2014, 10-17h
Self Build City // Experimental Building Practice
More and more groups of young architects work not only as designers in their offices, but also build prototypes and parts of their interior designs and buildings. In these projects, planning, researching, participating, designing and debating are combined into an 1:1 experiment, which offers abundance and an enormous amount of freedom that usually gets lost in conventional planning structures and building processes. To be present – on location – and to be able to react to existing or developing social and architectural conditions is a component of their work. Participation and building in temporary communities creates the foundation for a new a culture of planning. The architects and planners also find themselves in the role of mediators between the various local interest groups and between levels of urban planning. Their presence on location can reveal potential, move processes along and realize appropriation activities. Empty buildings, urban wasteland and dead traffic nodes become nodes of action.

How do we see the Osthang Project in relation to the historical “Mathildenhöhe Artist Colony”? What are the objectives and methods of the build and design movement? Is it essential for these socially engaged projects that the architects are present on site? Does the involvement of the user and the architect in the active building process lead to a new architecture? How can we incorporate the experience made in this processes into the everyday planning practice? How can we negotiate clashing needs and interests in this participatory processes? How can this kind of open building processes be applied to more long term and large-scale projects?

The following questions should be discussed in this section:
How do we see the Osthang Project in relation to the historical “Mathildenhöhe Artist Colony”? What are the objectives and methods of the build and design movement? Is it essential for these socially engaged projects that the architects are present on site? Does the involvement of the user and the architect in the active building process lead to a new architecture? How can we incorporate the experience made in this processes into the everyday planning practice? How can we negotiate clashing needs and interests in this participatory processes? How can this kind of open building processes be applied to more long term and large-scale projects?

SPEAKERS: Studio Umschichten (Stuttgart), Marjetica Potrč (Ljubljana/Berlin), ConstructLab (Paris/Berlin), Inari Virkkala (Helsinki) instead of Susanne Hoffmann, Baupiloten (Berlin) (canceled), orizzontale (Rom), Erlend Blakstad Haffner (Oslo), Atelier Bow-Wow (Tokio), transparadiso (Wien)