The new Berlin Threshold Atlas

During the workshop we will use a variety of artistic methods and strategies to develop a new edition of the Berlin Threshold Atlas, tracking down, documenting and bringing to life ruptures, transitions and thresholds.

After the Wall came down, Berlin has become famous for its fractures and scars, its open spaces and the enormous creativity they have unleashed. Berlin was synonymous with dynamism, diverse subcultures, a vibrant club and cultural scene, a wide variety of social and artistic spaces and fields of experimentation. In the meantime, the city has come under increasing pressure: The housing market is competitive, vacant lots and open spaces have been filled with investor architecture. Displacement and gentrification are exacerbating the social situation and creating parallel, segregated living environments. But even today the hidden urban potentials and qualities, the niches and in-between spaces, they still exist, but they are less obvious than before; it takes a specialised, focused view to see them.

During the workshop, we're going to explore the city of Berlin. We map, observe and track down in-between spaces and hidden urban potentials. We use various artistic strategies derived from the well-known great Berlin Flâneurs or the Situationists. The aim is to dissect the city, to experience it creatively, unsystematically and spontaneously. Based on Walter Benjamin's "threshold concept", we ask about the transitional areas and borders (where are the borders of the situations that merge into one another in the threshold area? What is the quality of these threshold? When do we cross an area and how can these areas be described or visualised?) In a joint process, a new Berlin threshold atlas (c.f. Arch+ 192/193, 2009) will be created, a compendium of i.e. text, image and video, which may also include performative and interventionist strategies.

Schedule:

• 1st Day (Monday): Start (Introduction); Agreement on the conditions and areas of work; first stroll in a certain area  to get familiar with the context. Propably a tour in Schöneberg on “Benjamin`s Traces” with the book “Berliner Kindheit um 1900”
• 2nd Day (Tuesday): Introduction in “flânerie” and exploration with walking methodology
• 3rd Day (Wednesday): Collection of materials and first prototypes of “translations”; Agreement about the final product and collection
• 4th Day (Thursday): Break; free work
• 5th Day (Friday): Aristic response and further work at the (own) projects
• 6th Day (Saturday): Final adjustments and production presentation/performance/interventions

Knowledge requirements

In order to have a common working basis, selected texts will be provided for preparation and two walking tasks (one small and one large) will be set to be carried out in the participants' own city.
 

Equipment requirements

Clothing appropriate to the weather, so that we can work outside at all times.

Computer, camera, drawing materials
 

Dr. Turit Fröbe is an architectural historian and urbanist. For many years she taught as an assistant professor/visiting professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. Today she works as a non-fiction writer and in the field of built environment education. In 2014 she founded DIE STADTDENKEREI, which offers cities and municipalities unconventional, playful communication projects aimed at improving and enhancing cities by changing the perception of their citizens.

die-stadtdenkerei.de

Karl Michael Lange is a graduate engineer in urban and regional planning (TU Berlin). He leads the STUDIO IN//stabil (design studio for social and cultural urban development in Berlin and Stuttgart) and is chairman of the associations Produktionskollektiv (association for social and cultural urban development in Vienna and the Stuttgart Region). He is a research associate at the HfWU Nürtingen-Geislingen/Germany, lecturer at the New Design University St. Pölten/Austria and the CRITI.co Sustainability Hub / ESAP - Escola Superior Artistica do Porto/Portugal (Department of Sustainable Urban Food Design) and supports Chinese youth in developing sustainable business models on behalf of the Goethe-Institut Beijing.

www.studioinstabil.eu 

www.produktionskollektiv.net