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An intertwining of four Berlin communities

Part 2 Project 2003
Laura Bennett
Paloma Strelitz
University of Edinburgh Edinburgh | UK
Despite the successful functioning of separate districts for immigrants, bohemians and the wealthy within Berlin, there is an urge for a society where everyone is the same. As the new global architecture eradicates traces of past divisions, the city forgets it is this focus on difference and divide which fuelled its vibrancy. My project investigates an intertwining of immigrant, allotment, apartment block and market communities and the resultant ‘showdown’ spaces. The community developments were initially investigated as a series of territories and boundaries created by their relative differences in movement. The development weaves through the city, along the wasteland left by the former Berlin wall.


Beginning with an analysis of different kinds of movement-patterns (swarm, stampede, prowl, huddle, etc.), Laura developed a complex urban project which imagined the chain of sites within Berlin which marks the former existence of the wall as a complex circulatory within the city. Within it, housing typologies for immigrants were interwoven with supporting facilities and other accommodational forms. Choosing one area, Laura demonstrated, in a series of quite beautiful drawings, the quality of urban space that could be achieved: her proposal is both strongly civic, yet inventive, pliant, and highly responsive to the ebb and flow of activities that would wash across it during the cycles of everyday life in the city. More generally, in urban terms it is an intriguing and suggestive proposal for this extraordinary urban inner ring of waste-land that is currently in danger of being simply obliterated.

Tutor(s)
Ms Naomi House
2003
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