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Medal Winner 2015

The Heteroglossic City: A polemic against critical reconstruction in Berlin

Part 2 Project 2015
Finn Wilkie
Mackintosh School of Architecture | UK
The thesis is a critique of the managerial urban paradigm of Critical Reconstruction, against which a response is developed at both an urban and an architectural scale. The totalizing ideology of post-unification planning in Berlin is rejected and a partisan urban development strategy is elaborated through formally finite and contextually specific architectural interventions. This Heteroglossic City is conceived as a dialogically articulated ensemble of diverse relationships in a polycentric and structurally organic urban plan.

The formal, metaphysical, and programmatic consequences of Critical Reconstruction are identified as the primary areas of contention. Through comprehensive analysis of these specifics, a conceptual framework is established from which an illustrative architectural intervention is determined: the Bauforum. This finite and critical response to the urban environment embodies both an architectural and an urban intent: in the Heteroglossic City, the specific circumstance is the index for the constitution of the urban structure as a whole.

As a platform for dialogue-focused planning, the components of the Bauforum serve as a physical pivot for the development of a more sustainable urban development strategy: a collective endeavour, growing out of what is present and continuously adjusting to changing circumstances over time.

Finn Wilkie

Tutor(s)

2015
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