Lead by the question how current collaborative practices are creating new urban spaces we will work with different actors and pioneers in the city to develop proposals for the future of the common in different perspectives. The semester contains three blocks, each of them examining and deconstructing existing (infra)structures and artistic positions of the common and constructing a real utopia based on existing social practices, understanding the space as agency of the common.

#FLUID COMMUNITY FOOD SYSTEMS

cooperation with design department (Entwurf und Entwicklung im Design)

19.04.2017 – 16.05.2017

By acknowledging the city as a living system where things grow organically we will approach its territories as a fertile ground for community regeneration and a healthy (fair, resilient, circular, sustainable) local food system, while understanding ourselves as agents of change.This living city is already emerging with new kinds of infrastructures: food coops, collective urban gardening and farming, etc.

These infrastructures empower different agents to create new hybrid structures for the future city. On the other hand such places of empowerment deliver the ground for negotiating the urban and for self-determination of the marginalised. We will examine them under different aspects e.g. gardening as a social practice or how the urban space can be activated for food production.

We kick off the semester with a Berlin wide field research, exploring and identifying key elements for local food systems in a community context: production, transformation, distribution, consumption. The result of the field research will be shared in a collective map.

Taking “Haus der Statistik” as a case study, the aim of this block is to develop spatial proposals for future hybrid structures of production, consumption and social inclusion of fluid community food systems as real utopia.

#GORDON MATTA-CLARK

cooperation with ZKR Zentrum für Kunst und Öffentlichen Raum and the exhibition “Zwischen Räume”

30.05.2017 – 20.06.2017

Taking the acknowledgements of the first block in the second block we will focus on the legacy of Gordon Matta-Clarks early works. Especially in this stage of his work he emphasised on creating spatial practices of the common and the intersection of the private and public sphere by initiating “spacegiving activities”.

After a close engagement with Gordon Matta-Clarks work and a profound input through the exhibition “Zwischen Räume” at ZKR the re-enactment of

one or more of these “spacegiving” activities in Berlins public space will provoke the reflection on social and artistic urban practices then and today.

Taking it further we will analyze Gordon Matta-Clarks usage of film and photography as documenting tools and artistic practice – to then find our own way of using this media in the project.

Through the cooperation with ZKR the work will become part of the group exhibition “Zwischen Räume” in Schloss Biesdorf.

#CONSTRUCTING THE COMMONS

cooperation with Global Studio Berlin and students from UTS, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building in Sydney

03.07.17- 14.07.17

In the third block of the project we question the relevance of the new commons. Together with students from RMIT University, Sydney we focus in this “Global Studio Berlin” on urban and spatial models and scan basic conditions for commons and commoning. It is significant that sharing has become a term belonging to the economic realm and the meaning of sharing has radically changed. We want to look if there are spheres beyond the market, which allow to shape our living environments.

Our point of departure is a project for a boarding house, which was designed by Walter Gropius as the German contribution for the Werkbund exhibition in Paris in 1930. It shows how he imagined the future of housing and the social changes that were to accompany it. We spend the first week of this block (03.07. -07.07) in the Bauhaus in Dessau. In the second week, being back in Berlin we keep working with our partners from Sidney in the studio.