10 July 2021
Between June 28th and July 4th, the community of learners and teachers gathered in Berlin for the first of the two live workshops that are part of Desinc Live’s educational offer. The Berlin workshop took place in the district of Marzahn, located on the outskirts of the city. Here, a refugee camp initially set up as an emergency shelter is now one of the largest accommodations for refugees in Berlin.
The workshop engaged with this context through the ‘experimental construction site’ known as Stadtwerke mrzn, which was initiated by S27 in Summer 2020 as a model campus for the new citywide urban practice network. Stadtwerke mrzn utilises arts-based methods to explore how residents can gain agency to transform their livelihoods and the spaces where they live. The workshop addressed the link between art and architecture and their possibility of building local resilience in the context of migration and social exclusion – particularly during the current global pandemic. The workshop took a collaborative and cross-disciplinary approach to understand urban space as a product of multiple relationships and urban practice as an instrument for social change.
Learners were divided into three main groups, each working on a different scale (micro-, meso-, and macro-scale) to assess the relationship between the workshop site and its whereabouts, the living conditions of its inhabitants, and the potential interventions to be implemented on-site
The microscale
This level explored a site in Marzahn, surrounded by social housing and refugee homes, where learners were asked to connect to the people and build structures to support the infrastructure. The group also organized a one-week-long workshop for international students.
During the process, the group faced stability, time management, material shortages, and communication barriers. Still, it built a 4-by-4 meters wooden pavilion that the site’s visitors can now use. Different seating options were built, and a small high point for the children acts as a treehouse.
The pavilion is built from 6 towers connected through diagonal and horizontal beams giving stability. Tables and benches allow the other sides to stay more open, connecting the previous meeting, the cooking area, and the new room. The group also added a big table to create an inviting space that can be used to eat, talk or work.
The mesoscale
This level explored how resilience can emerge in the context of migration, marginality, exclusion, and beyond in the current context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Stadtwerke mrzn is located at Otto-Rosenberg-Platz, on the eastern edge of the district Marzahn, which was built during the post-war period and belonged to DDR. The square is located in an industrial area and is separated from the residential area by a multi-lane road, Märkische Allee. There is a privately run housing facility for homeless people next to the site. Also, in 2015, an emergency shelter for refugees was opened in former office buildings next to the site, which now is housing ca. 900 people, mainly families. Therefore, the group was asked to connect the residential and industrial areas of Marzahn.
The macro-scale
This level looked at Marzahn from a far-reaching perspective. The first approach challenged the dichotomous understanding of city and countryside, center and periphery, towards a more complex spatial analysis. To point out the existing qualities of Marzahn as an area of transition between city and countryside. Learners coined the term ‘intercity’ that, on the one hand, connects different urban contexts and, on the other hand, strongly shows its characteristics and realities.
Discovering Marzahn in different modes, learners identified what they called typologies of appropriation – spaces, such as the field, the yard, the bridge, that show specific morphologies that are representative for the structure of Marzahn and, at the same time, contain openness for a new future to be imagined.
Three of the learners from the UK cluster could not attend the Berlin live workshop due to restraints related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, a blend of online and in-person activities were organised for the London-based participants that addressed these aims by encouraging participants to engage with their own context, and to compare their experience to what will be happening in Berlin. During the week, UK cluster participants in London explored the same idea of ‘making the city’ that was addressed in Berlin.
The London Cluster learners also each led visits in London that were relevant to their own urban practice and learning journey: Clitterhouse Farm community project, Cricklewood; Elephant & Castle latin village; Clapham Deep Level Shelter and Black Cultural Archives, Brixton.
Throughout the week, the London-based participants collectively documented stories of making, both from Berlin (based on the online interactions with S27, UDK and the group’s ambassadors) and in London (based on self-organized site visits). A collaborative Tumblr website was created by the learners to trace their collective learning during the workshop and to record the interactions, experiences, ideas and knowledge gathered along the way.
The Berlin live workshop has been challenging for the community of learners and teachers, as people faced numerous issues. The unstable weather obliged the participants to adapt and to slightly modify the programme; communication was sometimes difficult due to the presence of asylum seekers and homeless people who did not speak English nor German; and the field site was multi-layered and complex to understand.
Nevertheless, all the challenges only favoured the cooperation between learners, teachers and locals (especially thanks to shared activities such as cooking), and the community found in itself the resources to cope with the unexpected. The interdisciplinarity that characterises the group helped them to creatively match the aims of the workshop and to provide Marzahn with a set of structure that will surely remain as a legacy of this wonderful experience!