Rethinking Berlin. A retrospective of Jean-Philippe Vassal's two years' guest professorship RETHINKING BERLIN ADIP MAGAZINE #1

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1 architecture design innovation program Rethinking Berlin ADIP, the chair for Architecture Design and Innovation, is a professors at the Institute for Architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin. In 2007, ADIP welcomed Jean-Philippe Vassal, founding partner of the architectural office Lacaton & Vassal in Paris, France. RETHINKING BERLIN is the first issue of the ADIP MAGAZINE series and a retrospective of Jean-Phlippe Vassal s two years guest professorship. Under his guidance ADIP dedicated itself to research and design topics in Berlin, to the understanding and description of varying facets of life in the city, and to the exploration of potential future urban and architectural RETHINKING BERLIN laboratory for new ideas and changing input, run by guest A retrospective of Jean-Philippe Vassal's two years' guest professorship developments. RETHINKING BERLIN presents a relevant selection of the ideas, investigations, and conclusions of the entire staff, external practitioners, theorists, and critics, as well as selected works by students who have begun their personal investigations and developed various future scenarios for Berlin. Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin ISBN ADIP MAGAZINE #1 14,00 architecture design innovation program

2 Editorial ADIP, the chair for Architecture Design and Innovation, is a periodically transforming laboratory for new ideas and changing input, run by guest professors at the Institute for Architecture at the Technische Universität Berlin. Providing a platform for visiting architects of high stature from around the world, our department seeks to explore architectural design from a prevailing, innovative, and international perspective. This enriches the experience of the faculty, the students, and the community at large through the resultant influx of new guests and voices exploring issues of relevant architectural design through active teaching. The specific research and teaching fields of the professorship are deliberately left open in order to allow each invitee to take full advantage of their time and educational endeavours, and to further their own architectural language and professional interests in a collaborative fashion with students. In the spring of 2007, ADIP welcomed Jean-Philippe Vassal, founding partner of the architectural office Lacaton & Vassal in Paris, France. Under his guidance our chair dedicated itself to research and design topics in Berlin, to the understanding and description of varying facets of life in the city, and to the exploration of potential future urban and architectural developments. Rather than requesting our students to resolve specific programmatic and functional issues, the investigations were instead focused on Berlin s qualities as a city, and involved a rethinking of the city s characteristics and specialized needs. By observing current situations and transformation processes in Berlin we were able to retrieve detailed information on several places of interest. These spaces were scattered throughout the city, and responded to different scales and dimensions. For instance, we were interested in assessing places as heterotopical entities, and investigated their immanent cultural, social, and historical diversities. Another key intention was to understand the potential of enhancing a culture of process and participation towards societal involvement in the act of design. As architecture can position itself as a critical tool for the examination of social and cultural life, we aimed at raising new questions, curious as to the answers that would arise. Furthermore, since architecture is challenged to solve programmatic conditions not only in a technical or infrastructural sense, but in recognizing the spatial dimension of this task in a metabolic understanding and in terms of a wider responsibility we encouraged ourselves and all students to look at our environment with fresh eyes and an unbiased mind, and to be inventive in how an existing place is approached and researched. Especially as Berlin is a city which reveals many traces of its history, despite lacking concrete answers as to how to accept, adapt, or link reminiscences of the past and present conditions with anticipated future scenarios, new relevant answers for spatial transformations need to be investigated. We thus indulged in an intensive research of key areas in Berlin in order to understand the dynamics of the city and to eventually gain enough insight to be able to offer a series of subtle urban and architectural proposals. RETHINKING BERLIN is the first issue of the ADIP MAGAZINE series. Like all of our engagements during the two year guest professorship of Jean-Philippe Vassal, this magazine has been initiated by ADIP: it is however the result of a common effort by teachers and students. It presents a relevant selection of the ideas, investigations, and conclusions of teachers and students, as well as external practitioners, theorists, and critics. Highlighting Jean- Philippe Vassal s input and incorporating important contributions from the entire staff, as well as selected external contributors, we aim to offer you a series of background information. We then want you to delve into the works by students, who, at different locations, have begun their personal investigations and developed scenarios for Berlin. This work reflects our research goals, and all projects are, independent of their location within the city of Berlin, assigned to four categories, highlighting ideas about discovering, appropriating, interlinking, and bejeweling specific parts of the city. Printed work as well as digital presentations, including films and animations, are catalogued in this magazine and on the attached DVD. ADIP would now like to invite you to browse through the pages or enjoy the DVD, finding something new or rediscovering something familiar in the city of Berlin. Daniela Konrad Berlin, Spring 2010 EDITORIAL

3 You Have to Tell a Story An interview with JEAN-PHILIPPE VASSAL Since you started working at the TU Berlin your design studios focus on the city of Berlin. Why did you choose to work with Berlin, and which aspects hold your interest? The city of Berlin and the question of Berlin is certainly the reason why I am teaching here. I was not especially interested in teaching at that moment, but the question of Berlin really concerned me. It was interesting precisely to come here and to try to think about the city of Berlin, because it is in a unique situation now in Europe, a very particular situation for a city. It is really interesting to focus on Berlin s situation. If you are talking about a particular situation, what are some of the particularities of Berlin that differ from, for example, Paris? Berlin is totally different, not only from Paris, but from all other cities; in Europe and worldwide. This is due to many reasons: because of the history of Berlin, because of all the movements that have been here, and because I have a feeling that something is happening here that is completely new, and it is interesting to search and focus on that. What is also incredible is that Berlin is the only city with so many architectural experiments and works. There were some strong architects working here: Corbusier, Alison and Peter Smithson, Gropius, Aalto, Mies van der Rohe, Scharoun. You cannot find another city with so many great architects. Especially interesting is the situation of Berlin in terms of mobility, transportation, and the structure of the city. This question of movement and transportation is very much linked to the development and transformation of new and actual cities. You said before that the S-Bahn and the transportation system makes Berlin different from other cities. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about this? I think as architects or urban planners we need to be very close to each inhabitant. It is about the comfort of the place where you live, the individual space. Then there is a sort of progression linked with the movement of when you leave your house, and go outside, and start walking, and take a train or take a metro, and go to university. In the end, it is all the movements of all the inhabitants that create the city. As architects and urban planners, we need to create better conditions to make these movements more comfortable in any case: movements in your house, movements in your area, movements in your city, movements in all territories. Understanding these movements, and then creating a good quality of space around all of these movements, is what we can do to make a city nice. What is interesting in Berlin is that you can actually see these movements on, for example, the S-Bahn. Although the S-Bahn is no different from the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn is at another level, precisely defined. This high definition of movement of the S-Bahn is very interesting, and creates good conditions for transportation. It is really interesting to sit in the S-Bahn, watching the city, the sky, the movement, the reflections, the people on the street below, in the streets, on their bikes. And if you can enjoy the transportation time you have to spend in your daily life, that s better. Imagine: in Paris for example, some people spend one or one and a half hours travelling in the metro each morning and each evening that is worse than working! If you were a student right now, which place in Berlin would you like to work with? The place near the ICC [International Congress Centre]. On the bridge crossing the motorway you can see this big building from the 80s that is now actually operating once again as an event venue, etcetera. The motorway is close, the railway line is close; this type of landscape. 6 7 RETHINKING BERLIN

4 Even more interesting for me is the geographical point of view. There is an incredible scale to all the elements: the building is big, but the space and the systems close to the building are also incredibly huge. If you look at the motorway it is like a valley, a valley of cars. It could also be a river, but it is actually a motorway. You can see the different levels of the positions of the elements there: the motorway, the S-Bahn, the bridge and the ICC building, another tower behind, and the landscape of the city behind the curve of the motorway. It is like the movement of cars: it is really dense. So, if I had to choose a place in Berlin as a student, I would take this one. Who influenced your personal understanding and perception of architecture? I worked with an architect in Bordeaux, Jacques Hondelatte, for five years. I remember the first time I went to his office. I was practising drawing lines on transparent tracing paper. At that time we didn t have any computers, and he came and said to me, So which line do you think is the right one inside all these lines? I couldn t say. He said, When you are sure that this line is right, you trace it, but before this it is not necessary. He was saying that a project was at its best in his head and in his mind, and then it was finished or built. But before it was at its best, it had to remain in his mind, because in his mind the building was far more precise than with these old kind of drawings. At the same time the building was still free to change and free to move. So for him, a project is free in your head, but at the same time it is extremely precise. When we were designing with him we generally never drew anything except what already existed, because if you draw what exists you cannot make mistakes. We drew nothing of the projects themselves. And we were talking, thinking, and trying to imagine the project in our heads just by discussion. He would describe to us the buildings he had in his head very precisely: When you open the door, you open upon a space where the light is quite dark, and then you come upon this wall here which will reflect the light, and then three metres more you turn left, and there you find the stairs and take the stairs. Finally, when we had to draw these elements for the builders, we were able to do it immediately, and very precisely. We never hesitated because everything was already in our heads, and went directly from our heads to the paper. The builders were able to build it exactly how we had it in our heads. Could you imagine working in such a way with your students? Yes, we have tried to talk, we have tried to make things clearer and clearer in our heads. I think an architectural project is really like a poem. You have feelings, sensibility, words, work. How do you organize the scraps? How can you make beautiful music through all the lines? A poem is a delicate and musical way of reading, and at the same time it tells a story. In architecture it is the same, you have to tell a story. How do you see teaching, regarding the design process, at an architectural school? In my own architecture I try to work on this question of how to add, to transform, to take the richness of what exists, and then to push it. In teaching it is the same. Imagine that you never teach alone. You have other professors, you have other methods, you have other ways of teaching. Effectively, you always think a project is interesting to teach in a different way. At this moment the students experience a different kind of teaching. When you do something, you do it because you like it, because it is closely related to your own way of making architecture, but also because you think this can be a complementary approach to teaching, and therefore of learning, for the students. INTERVIEW

5 #4 ROSARIO TALEVI, ANA VOGELFANG Semester: Summer 2008 Advisor: Jean-Philippe Vassal Adrenaline Generates More Adrenaline RETHINKING BERLIN

6 We always work with architecture, for architecture, or on behalf of architecture. This time, however, we are working within architecture. This makes us fantasize. We picture this opportunity as an initial hunting phase. The search for places, ideas, behavior, actions It is pure scouting; there are neither resolutions nor happy endings. It is an undefined continuum of discoveries and interrogations, generating situations for the pleasure of adventuring. DIScOVERING

7 #8 QUENTIN NIcOLAÏ Semester: Winter 2007/2008 Advisor: Daniela Konrad When Snow Falls on Berlin A STRATEGY TO cultivate THE INDETERMINATE SPAcE Berlin has absorbed different, important phases of construction and demolition from the early twentieth century up until today. The major phase of development is due to demolition caused by the war, which made available new open spaces of different sizes in the heart of the city for further appropriations RETHINKING BERLIN

8 Appropriating

9 Buildings of different periods are coupled to form the city of Berlin as we know it. In other words, the city is the result of the superimposition of different phases. Some elements considering both the built and void spaces have persisted from generation to generation until today. They are witnesses displaying traces of the city s evolution. The area situated between Ostbahnhof and Warschauer Straße, along the river Spree, is a perfect representation of the superimposition of different phases of development. It is crossed by a fragment of the Berlin Wall, which has now become an important tourist attraction in Berlin. The industrial buildings remind Berlin of its industrial past along the Spree, while many residential houses stand alone, neighborless, and untouched by the war. All these elements are embraced by a large empty indeterminate space. The area clearly has the status of a space on hold. However, the emptiness gives a quality to the site which cannot be found in centres of other European cities. To preserve these specific qualities the empty space needs an intensification of its particularities. It needs to be activated, to not be conquered and filled with buildings and density, ignoring the importance of such an unusual space. The voids origins have to be defined and cultivated in order to give an identity to the site. 1 Before 1940 Between 1940 and 1953 Between 1953 and 1989 Between 1989 and today 2a 2b 2c RETHINKING BERLIN

10 1 Progressive transition of built forms around the Ostbahnhof area from 1940 to today 2 a Houses without neighborhoods b Abandoned industrial buildings c Superposition of historical layers 3 Bars and restaurants under the rails 4 Floating family housing 3 4 Appropriating

11 The entire site is covered with a uniform material to provide a coherent background for new appropriations of the space along the Spree between Ostbahnhof and Warschauer Straße. It is in constant mutation and is spatially indeterminate. Specific zones are formed locally through the creation of strategic poles there is no structure imposed to determine the events, the events determine the structures. 1 The poles generate particular atmospheres, which are either new or adaptations and intensifications of what already exists. The atmospheres are continuous and diversified at the same time. There is no opposition, but rather coexistence RETHINKING BERLIN

12 1 Master plan of the area 2 Atmospheric plan of the site 3 Forest around the O2-Arena 4 View of the river Spree from the top of the new hill 5 Residential waterfront housing Appropriating