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Index HIER ENTSTEHT | Imprint |
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Jesko Fezer, Mathias Heyden
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One possible starting point is an analysis of spatial appropriations that take root outside official planning processes and the ways in which they relate to a given place. The architect, Wolfgang Kil retrospectively analyzes unplanned, but tolerated appr opriations in GDR social housing complexes, using the example of re-designed gardens and balconies. The structural rigidity of the buildings served as a framework for appropriation through informal renovations and decorations: The collectively owned dwelling was something to be taken into possession, rather than a commodity with obligations to preserve its value. On the city level, architect Yvonne P. Doderer refers to realms of emancipation and socio-political resistance within the disciplining logic of urban planning. Using the appropriation of an inner-city area by womens’ project groups as an example, she develops a feminist perspective on the potential of the urban. Against this backdrop, she calls for the tolerance and promotion of independent initiatives against procedures of control and the moderation of participation. The architect Eckhardt Ribbeck departs from the European framework by taking up the historical obse rvations of unplanned appropriations of space by John F. Turner and Colin Ward in the 1970s. Taking Mexico City as an example, he describes illegal self-building as an effective production of space under conditions of extreme poverty and the absence of national regulations. Conditioned on an extremely capitalistic property market and effectively simple construction methods, a fixed structure develops that is open to spatial variety and constant alterations. This form of involuntary self-activation under economic pressure is the only possible means of attaining space necessary for survival in such regions. Within the phenomena of intermediate uses, the landscape architect Klaus Overmeyer from the research project “Urban Catalysts” locates spontaneous and u nplanned temporary. Theses spaces lie outside the attention of planners and the pressures of utilization resulting in different processes of appropriation. In dealing with these new requirements, planners positioned themselves as potential “enablers”. New tools for process-oriented planning must be developed and new participants included. This process of formalizing intermediate uses must also always battle with more controlled claims on space and with the anticipated profits of real estate. Experience of self-organized productions of space generate different criticisms of planning. Using examples of self-organized structures within the process of trans-formation in Europe, the architect John Palmesino , part of the spatial research project “Multiplicity”, criticizes the analytical planning perspectives on territories and subjects which assume that the acquisition of rational knowledge is a basis for design. He challenges the planner’s blurring objectivistic perspective with the dynamics of specific local structures being developed without plan by a multiplicity of participants. In the observation of these forms of self-organization, Palmesino sees an approach toward an understanding of today's spatial changes. The project Divercity, of the Berlin-based architecture office ifau, argues against the simulation of variety in urban planning and the immobility of fully regulated planning tools, in favour a of a complete withdrawal of rules in order to generate activity and encourage co-operation. With open source programming as a model of collectively structuring an open design process, ifau describe how one can use access to information, provision of communication tools, flexible planning instruments, to spur participation of different participants and start an openended process of town planning and architecture. Another strategy for the diversification and integration of diverse players is being developed at present by the architectural group Raumlabor_berlin for Halle Neustadt. Diversified participation strategies should impact the development of neighborhood identities within the city. Raumlabor_berlin, recognizing the limitations of a master plan, offer a spatially partitioned, process-based planning model, which develops communication structures, scenarios and tools. Another strategy to deal with the limitations of planning is to activate the potential of industrial building. In the Netherlands, Nicolaas John Habraken dealt early on with the possibilities of individual user participation in the industrial construction of houses. The Dutch research project S.A.R., founded by Habraken in 1964, located the problem of massive housing projects of the post-war period not in the industrialization and their economics, but in the enforced elimination of the inhabitant from the building and planning process. Arguing against a paternalistic conception of architecture, he calls for a redefinition of the role of the planner in favour of real industrial manufacturing and user participation. He suggests a principle of open planning based on spatial considerations that are not fixed on final forms and makes those accessible and communicable. There is also the model project „Variables Wohnen” (variable dwelling) of the Bauakademie in Berlin and Rostock, one of the few building experiments in the GDR, which was based on active user participation and concerned itself with the potential of open-ended industrial construction methods. Herwig Loeper, architect, was involved in the planning and realization of this structurally and conceptually significant project. He reports how in the early 70's in the manufacturing of apartment buildings in the GDR, the parameters of standardization were tested experimentally. Parallel to Western European experiments, the introduction of flexibility and adaptability of apartments problematized concepts of regularization and self-determination, and thereby set forth possibilities for individualization within the conditions of state so-cialism. The architect Oliver Fritz describes the principle of mass customization and r ecent approaches to component configuration through variable parameters instead of fixed end forms. With plans as modifiable data files and individualized production, urban planning and architecture according to the differentiated desires of users appears to be technologically possible. The engineer Udo Kraft is presently developing with his project, ‘the growing house’ (“das mitwachsende Haus”), an economic and pragmatic construction model for the cultivation of affordable and modifiable living in the private home. Kraft demonstrates how cost-efficient building must take place gradually in order to remain flexible and therefore sustainable in the future. These structurally realistic projects still stand in opposition to the German “my own home”-mentality, the architects’ self-understanding and the economic logic of the building industry. An additional model of handling the limitations of planning is self-building by the users. Already in the late 1950s the Hungarian-French architect Yona Friedman developed an urban-design principle of open primary structures for free and selfdetermined use. He promoted the flexibilization of space and the potential of do-ityourself building methods. To empower the inhabitants, he uses simple sketches as communication tools and tests his theories in realizations like his self-building projects in India. The self-determined development of space is described by the energy technician, Martin Stengel in his account of Ökodorf Sieben Linden, a contemporary, live - work collective. This project for an alternative model of society, which understands itself to be a laboratory situation outside - urban everyday life and its obligations, also requires architectural-spatial self-organization. Thus, the communication of directdemocracy and social self-authorization are reflected in the do-it-yourselfconstructions of the settlement. These different forms of engagement with users always refer to a collective project of self-determination and self-organization. A mostly ignored instrument for enabling other building and living forms, lies for the economist George Knacke , in the principle of the co-operative. The co-operative as a social and judicial form of organization, particularly in relation to self-building and planning participation can yield the potential of joint economic self-determination. Knacke elaborates on this with the example of the Selbstbaugenossenschaft Berlin (a co-operative for do-it-yourselfconstruction). The international architecture group +RAMTV incorporated Internet supported communication between user and planner into the conception of its project for a new residential district in London. To concretize apartment prototypes, the wishes of potential users are collected and organized in relation to one other. This tool for overseeing participation is also seen as a way to strengthen interaction amongst the inhabitants prior to the building phase; in order, for example, to structure the relationships within private areas so that overlapping spatial programs and common use of private spaces are made possible. Beyond the possibilities of more effective communication and computer-assisted variable planning, +RAMTV emphasises new production methods for the individualization of space. Andreas Hofer of the co-operative project Kraftwerk1, describes the dynamics of the organization- and communication-structure of selfinitiated group living projects in the urban context of Zurich. On professional and diverse voluntarily levels, proposals for the building and its use were compiled. At Kraftwerk1, architecture is developed relatively independent from social organization. Spatial co-determination was made possible more through the planning of various sized rooms and configurations than offers to participate. How different the role of the architect appears
in connection with selfdetermined planning and construction processes,
was already apparent in the early debates about the possibilities
of opening planning concepts and the architectural theory of the
pioneers of a participative architecture. The Belgian architect
Lucien Kroll juxtaposes the still existing fordistic logic
of separated and rationalized spaces and the implicitness of user
participation. Kroll offers no planning theory and no social techniques
for persuasion in his projects instead he has practiced since the
60's an anarchist- subjective approach. His communicative praxis
sets the complexity of the usersubjects against the reductive limitations
of industrial building methods. He thereby extends the demand of
the users to be part of the building phase across the entire planning
and building process. He practices this in the office and on the
construction site. In Austria, Eilfried Huth was very early
to realize radical-participative building in the context of local
housing support. Extending the role of the architect, he implemented
a different kind of architecture on a local-political and building-law
level and thus opened possibilities for self-construction, self-planning
and self-determined spatial design in his projects. Johnny Winter
of the Viennese office BKK-3 describes the living projects of Sargfabrik
(coffin factory) and Miss Sargfabrik, which he initiated and planned
in collaboration with others. Together collective expectations and
proposals were developed and expressed in innovative collective
rooms, which among other things were also available for the inhabitants
of the local neighborhood. Winter stresses that particularly through
extensive participation, an ambitious architecture with experimental
spatial forms was made possible. Andrew Freear, co-director
of the Rural Studio, practices in Alabama in the architecture training
an intensive confrontation of architects with social reality. In
a 1:1 building praxis to support underprivileged and destitute persons
in construction projects that were not controlled by local building
offices, Rural Studio found and donated materials according to the
demands and needs of the users. They practice socio-political pragmatism
with their building experiments in a clear, demonstrative way and
by tracing the task of building through the user, they reinvent
the role of the architect as a problem solver.
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