Beyond Modernism - Vernacular Use(s) of Hansaviertel
MA Design Studio
Teaching
We will deepen our understanding of the so-called “existing” – a fertile ground for every project. Alongside historical research, planning, and market analysis to grasp the context, we will conduct intensive fieldwork in order to: 1) understand the site in its materiality, immaterial dimensions, and ontology, and 2) make conscious and well argued decisions regarding how the design project engages with the existing. This reflexion will be supported by readings on philosophy of the vernacular, new materialism and critical heritage.
Hansaviertel and its surroundings (IBA 57, the northern historic quarter, and northwest of Tiergarten) will serve as our field of inquiry. This heritage site is, in many respects, a true palimpsest. Successively a hunting reserve, a mundane fragment of the city, a field of ruins, and later the site of an international architectural exhibition, it has not undergone major physical transformation for nearly seventy years. Life has settled between memory, modernist heritage, and everydayness. People inhabit and continue to transform the place through the sedimentation of traces of their uses – in both material and immaterial forms.
Within this context, we will ask: what should be preserved, transformed, or erased to make space for the vernacular practice within a site strongly marked by institutional transformation and market forces? To address this question, we will rely on the tensions between three positions toward history: monumental, antiquarian and critical.
PiV offered by Fachgebiet Bildende Kunst:
In connection with the studio Beyond Modernism – Vernacular use(s) in Hansaviertel, an artistic research project using the medium of film will be conducted.
Intertwining archival images with footage captured on site during fieldwork, this research will constitute a pivotal moment within the studio, during which design project ideas will be developed between analysis and speculation through narratives that engage with the materiality of the site and the everyday practices of its inhabitants.
Team: Prof. Jörg Stollmann / WiMi Jeanne Lacour
(fig: Photos: Bürgerverein Hansaviertel e.V. (background) / CUD Team (foreground))