IKA REVIEW WINTER 2017

www.akbild.ac.at/ika

INSTITUT FÜR KUNST UND ARCHITEKTUR

INSTITUTE FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE

ANALOGUE DIGITAL PRODUCTION CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY ECOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY CULTURAL HERITAGE HISTORY THEORY CRITICISM GEOGRAPHY LANDSCAPES CITIES

1ST CMT HTC

BArch1 2 Matrix Maytricks BArch3 Useless

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BArch5 Inhabiting The City

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ESC GLC ADP

MArch Untitled

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Thesis project The disappeared valley

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MArch Indexing

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Thesis project The Architecture of a Burrow

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MArch ® – BAR !! CAD

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Lecture Series The City’s Future Natural History

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Photographs of models by Carla Veltman

Collective site drawing

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Advisors: Christina Condak Eva Sommeregger

Drawing by Yoko Halbwidl

Collective site drawing

Students: Veronika Behawetz Jakob Czinger Martin Eichler Patricia Griffiths Yoko Halbwidl Oana Ionescu Alma Kelderer Dila Kirmizitoprak Martin Kohlberger Diana Konovalova Valeriia Malysh Anna Orbanic Lisa Penz Zoe Pianaro Fabian Schwarz Magdalena Stainer Martin Sturz Carla Veltman Louis Zurl

Christina Condak Eva Sommeregger

Design Studio BArch 1

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1ST

Text: Christina Condak, Eva Sommeregger

Photograph by Martin Kohlberger

The matrix is an old trick.

A teaching device.

The matrix is about space.

No program at first and no site, Only gravity, orientation, dimension, But of course, there’s day and night.

Then, as if randomly, Richard Serra drawings are thrown in, Another ingredient.

Translate the black drawings through the forces of the verb list: to roll, to crease, to fold, to store…to cut…to flow…to rotate…to impress…of gravity…to hinge…of time…

Cast it in plaster.

Construct a beautiful formwork and don’t throw it away.

Is the blackness a material?

Is it a void?

Transform the plaster cast…

Enter these objects into the matrix. Fragments.

Love of objects.

Tectonic things.

Confront the matrix.

Positioning in the matrix: to hang, to balance, to lean…

Architectonically.

Enter the human figure.

The body. Anybody. Standing, sitting, lying down.

Origins, intersections, coordinates, point zero.

Monologues. Dialogues. Then conversations.

Sequences. Passages. Transformations.

The recognition of the space in-between.

Think about inhabitation in the matrix.

A programme?

Then the questions start coming: What is this matrix? Is it infinite?

Does it have a scale? Is it a site?

Is scale the same as size?

Does it have an edge or a limit?

Does it extend infinitely in all directions?

Are these columns and beams or are they imaginary vectors? Lines?

When I draw them, are they there?

Is it a structure?

Is there a ground?

Where does the sun come up?

Is there an inside and an outside?

Can I deform it? Can I remove parts of it?

What happens when my neighbour passes through my project?

Do I have to negotiate and change my design?

Can we work together?

Are we living in this thing?

Is it a house? Is it a city?

Is it the universe?

Can we see each other in the matrix?

Is it transparent?

Do I have a window? A door? A stair?

How do I get from here to there?

Can I see the horizon?

Will it rain?

Drawing by Martin Kohlberger

Drawing by Fabian Schwarz

FIRST YEAR

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Advisors: Michelle Howard Luciano Parodi

Sometimes something can be so spectacularly useless that it endures, and in enduring, it can be reinvented. Uselessness rarely matches our expectations and disappoints a priori, but it can also fascinate and liberate, because it contradicts the logic of use equals value.

Yuval Noah Harari, the author of “Homo Deus”,1 predicts that we are moving towards a world divided into two groups, the useful and the useless.

Could uselessness be contemporary humankind’s most valuable tool?

1 Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, (London: Harvill Secker, 2016).

Project title: LOOPING Point of research: KNOTS Emilia Piatkowska, Lucas Reisigl, Hannah Rade

Project title: A VOID Point of research: LAYERING Leonie Link, Hans Schmidt, Sophia Stemshorn

Michelle Howard Luciano Parodi

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Design Studio BArch 3

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CMT

CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL TECHNOLOGY Project title: TWINNED Point of research: CENTRALITY Diana Cuc, Felix Eibl, Ilinca-Rona Urziceanu

THE WALL-FITTER This is part of an ongoing investigation into a proposal by Gottfried Semper, who argued that the wall-fitter has a most important role to play in the history of art. Because of his political convictions, Semper was forced to migrate constantly and find new work in his places of refuge.

WEAVING AND MIGRATION The current fear of and antipathy to migrating peoples is not new; they were often prevented from practising the skills of settled folk. One exception was the weaving of baskets, which fit their lifestyle in that the raw material was free and they could be transported easily.

THE WOODEN GRIDSHELL The Mannheim Multihalle (Frei Otto and Carlfried Mutschler, 1975) is the inspiration for our research, an ultra-thin and lightweight wooden lattice structure. It was the high point of our excursion on wood and gridshells in France, Switzerland and Germany. Having withstood over 40 years of neglect, it is at risk of being demolished by a body politic that maintains that is is useless.

THE VESSEL & THE BODY This first stage of our enquiry culminated in the construction of a woven vessel with dimensions intended to relate to the human body. In preparation, each student was asked to choose a weaving method to investigate thoroughly. They wove three panels in different scales, each 1m in diameter, and then constructed three small, interrelated vessels, with the definition of the word vessel left up to them.

TODAY’S NEWS – TOMORROW’S FISH & CHIPS The material used for these studies was newsprint because it is strong, flexible and recycled; having served as a vital carrier of news, it is discarded as useless.

16 USELESS IDEAS These woven panels and vessels were then further observed using video, photography and collage in order to create the basis for a document containing the most diverse of useless ideas.

New ideas and perspectives can be revealed when one looks at so-called useless things for long enough.

WEAVING WOOD AND COMPETITION 6 teams of 3 students worked together to develop the final projects, which provide the basis for a competition to design wooden structures for two 1000m2 exhibition halls in Lower Austria. They built 1/5 scale models using an innovative, engineered plywood, only 1mm thick with a bending radius of 7cm. Rather than erring on the side of fatness, we tried to USE LESS materials, thus proposing an alternative approach to sustainable constructions.

Text: Michelle Howard, Luciano Parodi

Project title: PLAN B Point of research: PULLING BANDS Ida Fröhlich, Nikolaus Podlaha, Katharina Eder

Final presentations, January 2018. Photo: Clara Maria Fickl

Project title: NUB Point of research: TUBULARITY Pia Bauer, Leah Dorner, Daron Chiu

Project title: SEAM SPHERES Point of research: THREADS Daniel Binder, Ana Maria Chiriac, Iulia Cristian

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TRANSVERSAL LIVING. The Quality of Distance.

Project by Marcella Brunner.

Photo: Lisa Schmidt-Colinet

Advisors: Lisa Schmidt-Colinet Daniela Herold Students: Philipp Behawy Marcella Brunner Johannes Daiberl Une Kavaliauskaite Mira Keipke Ferdinand Klopfer Felix Kofler Felix Künkel Nathaniel Loretz Madina Mussayeva Nils Neuböck Lilo Nöske Maximilian Pertl Patricia Tibu Guest reviewers and lecturers: Tom Avermaete Urs Egg Michael Klein Martin Forstner Roland Krebs Heidi Pretterhofer Christina Condak Antje Lehn August Sarnitz Angelika Schnell Julia Wieger

Conflictual Spaces – Ambitious Edges: The pressure to develop affordable living space, to build fast and efficient, and to densify the city has created a climate in which reduction and minimization of the living environment is presented as a necessity – sometimes even as a lifestyle. This term’s HTC studio challenged this approach by asking: How can living space expand, transgress the borders of the unit and turn into an integral part of the city? How can it provide additional qualities for the surroundings, thus creating further added value for the city? In order to create a mutually beneficial situation, spatial settings that reaffirm the housing unit as private vs. the street as the space of the collective need to be questioned. Once the structure of the block is diluted, and more fluid states between living and the city can be assumed, what new spatial entities might crystallise?

In a simplified setting, the students developed proposals from two different perspectives: a place for 1 person and a place for 1000 persons. How can the architecture of “1 for 1000” provide additional qualities for the individuals and that of “1000 for 1” create unexpected possibilities in the city?

This particular setup and the emerging questions induced us to revisit the term of living as well as to rethink the role of the inhabitant.

The distinction between the German terms “Wohnen” (housing, living) and “Unterbringung” (accommodation), as Joachim Krausse formulates it in his article “Henry David Thoreau – Oder: Ist das Wohnen dem Experiment zugänglich?”1, puts forward the quality of housing as space for the individual, free from observation and control. The term “Wohnen” is etymologically connected to terms such as “unbekümmert sein” (being carefree), “zufrieden sein” (being content) and “nicht unwohl sein” (not being uncomfortable).

“Unterbringung”, on the other hand, describes a controlled environment and an instrument of repression. This primary meaning of “Wohnen” has lost its predominance, if we call to mind the regime of the standardised floor plan, produced by restrictive regulations that dominate subsidised housing production today.

By which means can we reintroduce spaces that bypass such controlled practices? How can planners enable autonomous and self-determined ways of inhabiting space?

Students experimented with spatial sequences based on the fragmentation of standard household units and multiple usages of spaces. The inhabitants were given an active role to exercise their agency, reconfiguring their living environment by negotiations according to temporal needs for space, desires for communal life or the wish to shape their surroundings. Transitions between the room, the street and the neighbourhood were developed as entities in their own right, which could potentially resist commodification through ambiguity, discomfort and uncertainty.

Text: Lisa Schmidt-Colinet, Daniela Herold 1 Joachim Krausse, Henry David Thoreau – Oder: Ist das Wohnen dem Experiment zugänglich?, ARCH+ 218 (2014): 18-19.

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Lisa Schmidt-Colinet Daniela Herold

Design Studio BArch 5

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HTC HISTORY THEORY CRITICISM

LINE. Static Structure - Dynamic Habitation.

Project by Ferdinand Klopfer.

Photo: Lisa Schmidt-Colinet

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REVIEW WINTER 2017

A prosthesis, looking for a body/site for mutual support.1 A Bridge Park for Vienna.2 A building that listens to the world.3 Swimming across the city. 4 Odours that rock the physicality of the world.5 The Theater of Memories.6 State of Confliction (spatialized).7 Cohesive Heterogeneity – the story of a fusion (Hochbruckenberg).8 ‘Ecotopia’ – an aggregated, heterogeneous dwelling.9 A poetic approximation of a shed.10 Hikikomori and its embodiment, its inscription into the city.11

Getting to not getting there puts you on some amazing tangents.

Gaëlle Obiégly, The Interior Monologue

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No title. No subject.

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Gaëlle Obiégly says that if you would be given a subject, it would be easier, that the subject might show you a way to mask out.13 These times ain’t easy times. And critical times are no times to mask out. The path toward effectual architecture in terms of a critical contribution to our societies is first and foremost that of independent thinking. The probably most sustainable project one can do in the field of art and architecture is to contribute to (continuously) educational environments that support, feed and provoke critical minds.

Text: Hannes Stiefel

1 Emma Carlén: “The prosthetic phenomenon of adding and adapting; being hold and holding, being stretched out and stretching out … who’s holding who. Again, the questioning of static status, by keeping it open/scale-less/non representative. Transition between the flesh and the added part. (…) In (later) drawings, I realized that (the developed) characters had an internal direction that could be read as sectional/planar. And also as an attempt to site them, in something bigger than themselves, I investigated them as architectural representations. Fan and Crossbow as sections, Lasso as plan. These sited versions are constructed from the character’s way of moving. So as a start, from the inside and out, in which construction is needed as a support for movement.

And these fictional constructions are still scale-less for me; they could be a small part in a pacemaker or a big city construction.” (-) 2 Doris Scheicher: “There is no need to add programme to enliven the place. Indeed, connectivity could be improved. There are busy roads on both sides of the river that hamper pedestrians to accessing the bank. Cyclists struggle with restrictions in the traffic-calmed areas, and access to the river is rare. So I created the link from the inner city to the Donaukanal and provided a fluent transition to the district across the water.” (Donau-Kanal-Insel (Schwedenplatz)) 3 Flavia Mazzanti: “An architectural instrument that catches and transforms sounds from its near and far surroundings, making use of Fourier Series to decompose sound into bunches of sine waves and processing sound recordings through REW (Room EQ Wizard) and Grasshopper Simulations. Visualized sound spectrums are reflected in dynamic floor and wall performances.” (Spectrum) 4 Anna Krumpholz: “Stadtbad is a soft public swimming pool, a moving subject, a dynamic body of water, positioned above the ground and public space, in, on and between the roofs of Vienna, as a counterpart to the rivers buried underground in the city. The “Soft Pool Concept” derives from the observation that water is form-free and form-giving at the same time, while it cannot hold itself.” (Stadtbad) 5 Christian Baumgarten: “The experience of smells now takes place on a spatial level. If you want to relate smell to our built environment, you have to break it down to its smallest elements: the atoms. Then everything – both the tectonic or material (territory, buildings, people) and the climatic or incorporeal (light, temperature, relative humidity, rain, wind, salt, CO2, photosynthesis) – consist of particles. Therefore, everything can be recorded as particles, which making no distinction between objects and products, buildings and landscape, sea and mountain, but understanding reality, and therefore the architectural project, as performing particles. These particles reproduce, in an abstract/real manner over time, a given condition of a given landscape. In comparison to architecture, such spaces will provoke a more direct interaction with the body, engaging an inhabitant’s sensorium and invading environments that are more generic. Then architecture is not bound to its solid elements any longer.” (Quantum Kitchen Physics – Fine Dining and the Impact of Particles) 6 Anne Kathrin Müller: “Memory Chambers: A place of memories ... Entering one of them – entering someone else’s head.” (Memory Chambers) 7 Tringa Metushi: “(…) These theories of space have been explored in both two and three dimensions, constantly tied to a utilitarian discourse, architecture, as an interpretation of the conflicts in today’s social system, itself a struggle between order and autonomy.” (smooth/striated) 8 Maximilian Klammer: “In_Between is a hybrid structure, an architectural design that considers metabolic (biochemical) processes and the emergence of space as a result of the dynamic interaction of diverse protagonists.” (In_Between) 9 Maximilian Hertz: “Common Grounds as a planning strategy wants to dissolve the exclusive / seclusive zoning concepts of contemporary planning practices. It offers interweaved utilization schemes based in concepts of much diversity.” (Common Grounds)

11 Manuel Bonell: “The project is about a social phenomenon in Japan called Hikikomori, which describes people who withdraw from social life, trying to constitute another personality in cyberspace – a liquid “space” where inside is nothing more than data. The project reconfigures that virtual space in the physical world with a transformable skin that forms a third space between a physical reality and the virtual. It is like a tumour inside a body – triggering constant transformation of all systems involved.” (Surrogate) 12 On the part of the ESC platform, there was no studio subject beyond the frame given by its name: Ecologies / Surprises / Critical Environments. The results were eleven highly individual projects in various scales from interior design to city planning, represented through the use of a wide range of media.

13 Gaëlle Obiégly, The Interior Monologue, in The Non-Titled Files, ed. Josh Müller, vol. 2 of Müller Josh 1-5, Vienna 2014; quoted in: IKA Preview Winter 2017, p. 11, ESC March 2017-18, Untitled / Critical Environments, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Institute for Art and Architecture

Prosthesis by Emma Carlén

10 Nathalie Kerst: “We shape the space and the space shapes us.” (Abstract Project Space Studies)

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Hannes Stiefel

Design Studio MArch

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ESC

ECOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY CULTURAL HERITAGE

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Advisor: Hannes Stiefel

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Fan / Crossbow / Lasso (Section/Section/Plan)

by Emma Carlén

Students: Christian Baumgarten Manuel Bonell Emma Carlén Maximilian Hertz Nathalie Kerst Maximilian Klammer Anna Krumpholz Flavia Mazzanti Tringa Metushi Anne Kathrin Müller Doris Scheicher

indexing light, Marina Resch

The unspeakable. Perspective, Elisa Mazagg

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Kathrin Aste

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Design Studio MArch

GLC

Rundgang, January 2018 Photo: Patricia Vraber

no title. The art of distortion, Angelina Thierer

GEOGRAPHY LANDSCAPES CITIES

Advisor: Kathrin Aste Students: Akbari Bahar Buxhofer Fabian Eckhart Joseph Kledzik Maximilian Mazagg Elisa Meze-Petric Brina Puschnik Katja Resch Marina Thierer Angelina Vraber Patricia Mittempergher Naomi Stratmann Dennis

untitled, Patricia Vraber

This discourse is based on the recognition that by practicing architecture, we are confronted daily with a variety of lists, such as lists that determine framework conditions, lists that reflect the design and its components, and lists intended to support the design by using special software like CAD applications for Rhino or other programmes.This leads to the question: Is the list an opportunity or rather a burden?

Personally, I am equally fascinated and annoyed by lists.

I have chosen the topic “Indexing” because I wanted to explore how something as apparently determined as a list can transform into a directory full of surprises. In this context, the German word “verzeichnen” with its prefix “ver-” appeared fascinating. The ambiguity of this word helped us challenge our understanding of lists, to take the word “verzeichnen” literally, and to give the order of things its discursive space.

One thinker who already discussed lists as an intellectual response to the problem of categorisation was Umberto Eco. His book “The Infinity of Lists”1, is about lists, more precisely about the cultural and historical significance and diffusion of the list, the catalogue, the index or the “etcetera”, as Eco constantly varies the terms.

Eco’s understanding of the list is guided by the epistemological assumption that it has never been possible to rely exclusively on the classification of specific things. In this context, Eco replaces practical lists with the counter-model of poetic lists: lists that follow arbitrary criteria, lists that can be extended or transformed infinitely. An example of such a list is Borges’ classification of animals in the Chinese encyclopaedia, which famously features the following taxonomy: “animals are divided into: (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance”.

The students were free to choose their own topics. They were invited to design, work and think in terms of a poetic list that links themes, places, individuals and things in surprising ways. In this sense, the studio tried to explore if and how things can be put into relation to one another by following the idea of a list and thus creating a “topos of unspeakability”.

Text: Kathrin Aste

untitled, Patricia Vraber

1 Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay (London: MacLehose, 2012).

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E-S-CHATOLOGIST

year: 2018 NewT-IKA

pathology: _ politico-ecclesiophobia scatophilia props: 3x2x2 m 200 kg bioplastic bamboo + PP pellets scanning and layering secretions line in real time as a topology in discovering and processes disruptive trajectories multiple feedback heuristic approximations duration: 6:00 pitch: physio-bio-metabolism digestive ecosophy repulsive matters the Eyes of G. Bataille Eros-Thanatos symbiosis and biochemistry Eden Park VS technoid-info-calypse

All images: NewT/IKA/2017

location: New-Territories LAB Bangkok

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Credits: “mythomaniaS” from a concept by New-Territories, M4 with IKA, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2018 Director Matt McCallum Cast Caitlin Lee Haas-Chullasapya Scenario Carlos Fuentes Almonacid Adrian Man Matt McCallum Duha Samir Production Nadja Krause Davide Porta Vongsawat Wongkijjalerd Set design Nadja Krause Davide Porta Helvijs Savickis Maximillian Unterfrauner Cinematography Adrian Man Costume design Duha Samir Sensor design Nadja Krause Davide Porta Prop design Georgios Chousen Helvijs Savickis Maximilian Unterfrauner Sound design Carlos Fuentes Almonacid CGI Damjan Minovski Video editors Adrian Man Matt McCallum Sound editors Carlos Fuentes Almonacid Duha Samir

… (06:13), 2017 video from mythomaniaS series https://vimeo.com/252858078 Trailer (01:34), 2017 https://vimeo.com/250475382

_”s/he”_NewT Personal secretaries: François Roche Damjan Minovski

Design Studio MArch

…Hi guys /// so I have something different coming up for you soon / why not reintroduce myself /// give you a little taste / what I really do / My name’s E // I’m a zero waste blogger // means that I reduce how much I spoil your planet / I’m a North Dakota girl // however // since my stuff isn’t appreciated back home / Beam me up, Scotty! / Thailand! / You know how it is // Oval Office puppets / corporate pigs / Republicans / Anyway / with this little thing / I developed my own way to trespass the realm of disgusting and engage my own physiological loophole ///// Hey! Help me re-metabolize the substances for my earthly delight garden // I’m sure you’ll be interested in the full story // check the movie ///// & remember… // the future is symbiosis and biochemical /

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ADP ANALOGUE DIGITAL PRODUCTION

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Thesis Project Thomas Huck

Advisors: August Sarnitz Kathrin Aste

Ponte del Ritorno; example of new infrastructure to reconnect the structures (Lückenschluss)

THESIS PROJECT

At the beginning of the last century, the region of Cadore in the Province of Belluno was planned to become a central alpine location. In order to create a perspective for the area’s future development, large infrastructure projects were initiated to overcome the topographical circumstances. Yet in 1963, a massive landslide brought the euphoria to an abrupt end. Caused by the construction of the Vajont reservoir, the landslide buried most of the canyon and thousands of lives. The remainder of the canyon was sealed off and the initial investments terminated. Subsequently, many buildings and projects fell into oblivion, as did their visionary plans, and Cadore’s development took a different turn.

The thesis project approaches this area, taking into account the present situation: destroyed, unfinished or deteriorated, it explores what there is: fragments of infrastructure isolated in the landscape. Precisely this imperfection of conditions “as found” creates interest and fascination for the thesis to evolve. After a wider view on the whole area and its construction history, the focus zooms in on the Vajont Valley. As a historical key lo­cation, the site requires new accessibility, from a metaphorical as well as a physical perspective. Carefully placed interventions aim to reconcile the area with its upsetting past and adopt the remaining pieces to create inspiration for new developments – on a site where interaction with the landscape placed a hold on once future visions.

THE DISAPPEARED VALLEY RECONCILIATION WITH THE LANDSCAPE

Abstracted canyon with fragmentary artificial structures (detail)

Abstracted canyon with fragmentary artificial structures (overview)

Valley picture: remains of former constructions

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Thesis Project Wolfgang Novotny

Advisors: Hannes Stiefel Werner Skvara

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THESIS PROJECT

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A BURROW A SPATIAL TRANSLATION OF FRANZ KAFKA’S SHORT STORY „THE BURROW“ “The Burrow” (German: “Der Bau”, 1923–1924) is a story fragment by Franz Kafka, published after his death and against his last will. It is characterized by precise and figure-centred descriptions. The reader is immersed in the environment of an unknown figure living underground. In the first paragraph, a situation occurs where this figure identifies itself as an architect, constructor or experimenter. Its language evokes spatial ideas, ideas of architecture as living space, physical and bodily space, a space of specific knowledge and visions. The narrator’s descriptions contribute to building a spatial impression.

In spatial terms, the construction is outlined as a system of tunnels and rounded, excavated spaces, which serve as living spaces or storage compartments, yet nonetheless form a protective bunker. Any changes to the underground structure directly reflect the figure’s mental state.

This thesis project takes the story “The Burrow” as a starting point for reconstructing its literary spaces. It is based on the assumption that fictional and un-built spaces are part of our cultural heritage. The focus lies on speculative architectural research, a poetical approach to architectural procedures and digital techniques. Considering the discipline of architecture as construction of possibilities, the project proposes the development of spatial models and processes. These originate based on an exploration of subterranean spaces through experimentation with a controlled apparatus digging through sandstone, aiming to reconstruct, understand and enter the underground structure of “The Burrow”.

Collage, digital digging apparatus and carved-out sandstone block

Franz Kafka, Sämtliche Erzählungen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1970).

Photogrammetric reconstruction of a mole’s burrow

Terrestrial LiDAR-scan, cave in Malleiten/ Lower Austria

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Endowed Professorship for Visionary Forms of Cities 2017/18

LECTURE SERIES

Sandra Bartoli

THE CITY’S FUTURE NATURAL HISTORY

Nature in Kulturforum Berlin (Sandra Bartoli, 2017)

When does a human-constructed place go beyond the human, and how necessary is this transgression? To look at the built environment from the perspective of natural history allows one to explore the city as a system and construct of the natural and human together; furthermore, it intro­duces the notion of the city (of tomorrow) as a producer of resources, and not as the machine of consumption we are used to assuming. In the logical consequence of the Anthropocene (the epoch of ecological collapse and mass extinction we currently live in), once the alleged anta­ gonism between city and nature is dissolved, the urgency arises for models of constructed environments that conceive of human and more-than-human creatures as equal and mutu­ally dependent.

Five public lectures of the winter term, introduced in the previous paragraph, attempted to tell an alternate history of the city not in opposition to nature.

The lectures presented an array of diverse examples of a prototypical understanding of ecology and environmentalism, linking the work of Annie FrancéHarrar (Humus Minister in Mexico 1952-1961) to the cross-species sociality of Donna Haraway, to the communication of trees described by forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, to green functionalist Leberecht Migge who, in the 1920s, viewed the garden as the core architectural element in order to build the city as a recycling machine producing resources.

Tiergarten, 210 hectares of forest and the oldest park in Berlin, is an important case study offering a perspective on the broader subject of the relationship between city and nature. It is a place where many aspects of ecology, urbanism, heritage, popular culture and politics are simultaneously present, but also visibly transgressed. Over time, Tiergarten has become an island of anomalies that can be read as the radical expression of what is most urban and public in the city. Here, human history and natural history are constructed together to shape a model for future environments in an ever-expanding sea of urbanization.

THE WORTH OF THE URBAN WILD An important movement born out of the situation of West Berlin after the war caused a paradigm shift to the worth of the urban wild in the city: this was the pioneering fieldwork that led to the Berlin Biotope Map of 1984. In cities like London and Berlin, bombed-out and derelict areas became wild gardens over a few years, with plants exotic to the city and also rare in the countryside. Bombs somehow acted as time machines when plant seeds, buried for centuries, were brought to the surface and germi­ nated, drawing the attention of naturalists, botanists and ecologists.

THE WALL After the division of Berlin, botanists and ecologists who were used to doing their research in the countryside reverted to the urban realm because it had turned into an unprecedented, exotic and exciting field of research. This phenomenon grew to the point that West Berlin became internationally known as the city at the forefront of urban ecology. A city enclosed by a wall constituted a very peculiar psychological situation where all open green spaces were viewed and cherished as a precious anomaly, and “in a kind of reversal of Robinson Crusoe, who builds a fence to enclose what could be saved for civilization, the city responded to its island condition within East Germany by looking to encompass nature within the confines of its own urban boundary.” 1

Koernerstrasse Berlin, wild trees in parking-lot (Silvan Linden, 2018)

In the age of the Anthropocene, the division between countryside and city has become obsolete. If it is accepted that nature has become something that is completely human-made, then it makes sense to look at the city from the point of view of natural history.

This reversal in perspective has the potential to open up new dimensions in planning, especially by reconsidering the relationship between city and nature, where the city is no longer viewed as a consuming machine, but a producer of resources. This kind of relationship was the focus of research carried out by

the students in the seminar “The Garbage Tree” and compiled in a reader. While the projects of the studio about Prater in Vienna are in the making, I will report here about the first Biotope Map in Berlin, a story that tells us about a city with a unique set of conditions, and a powerful planning instrument that counters the paradigm of human exceptionalism.

IMPRINT Institute for Art and Architecture (IKA) Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Augasse 2–6, 1090 Vienna 1st floor, core A

POLICIES The peculiar conditions of West Berlin set the ground for new policies of ecology, supported by the political climate with the emergence of a growing environmental awareness. The approval of the Berlin Nature Conservation Act of 30 January 1979 bound the Berlin Senate to develop a Landscape Programme with a Species Protection Programme applied to the entire city. Nature protection was to be applied in parallel to the entire land use plan. This unique alignment of conservation claims by ecologists with problem claims of green policy 2 led to the charting of the entire city as a construct of different biotopes on an extensive map.

THE BIOTOPE MAP Plant species were revealed as indicators of the quality of urban life: a bombed-out area between housing blocks, generally perceived as a wasteland, became a compelling new kind of natural space, and the map made this systematically visible. For the first time, a plan for the city was to protect and foster wildlife species, while many conventional policies of maintenance became a threat to biodiversity. The map, a visual key to its implementation and political power, not only included the city’s open areas, but also all the built structures, thus laying claim to the entire city3. Wild-sounding biotope names promised hybrid types of space, merging human and natural history, for example the highway biotope, the street biotope, and the sewage farm biotope. In the category “biotope of closed blocks”, buildings were also earmarked for fostering animal life, like birds, bats, moths, spiders, and field mice in attics and cellars.

Most importantly, the Biotope Map is a document where the conventional antagonism between city and nature is resolved.

and indifference also looks at a city made extensively of biotopes as repositories of life diversity. Areas that might appear derelict are revealed as “nature reserves”, like the lichens and mosses blooming in the cracks of sidewalks in February. Landscape architect Gilles Clément calls these areas of indifference “genetic reservoirs”. In a time when empty lots are disappearing, the growing of the city should be accompanied by a set of guidelines for indifference and forgetting, carrying its own degree of development: that of the urban wild. Going even further, in a time of mass extinction and ecological collapse, I propose that a plan of neglect for the city should be accompanied by a plan of destruction, taking things away from the city5 to make space for the urban wild, ambiguous and full of resources.

A MAP FOR PLANNING NEGLECT The Species Protection Programme suggests devices for a programme of neglect, where maintenance is intelligently minimal to foster multiplicity of life in the city. Many parks in the city, like the Park auf dem Anhalter Bahnhof, consisting of spontaneous plants, are among the achievements of the Biotope Map. Today, the vast urban wild presented in the Biotope Map is still present in part. But rapid building densification is endangering its existence. The uniquely beautiful ecology of the city depends on a caring level of forgetting and indifference on the part of the administration. The parks department is currently pri­ oritizing an ideological line of heritage preservation that privileges dilettantish reconstruction over ecological considerations. Spontaneous vegetation, whose vast appreciation was one of the achievements of urban ecology in the 1970s and 1980s, is considered worthless “Wildwuchs”4 today. The planning of neglect is also a large part of the strategies of the Biotope Map, which is, on its terms, a retrospective map of studied neglect. The approach of forgetting

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1 Irenée Scalbert, “London After the Green Belt”, AA Files, Nr. 66, 2013, pp. 1-15.

2 Jens Lachmund, Greening Berlin – The CoProduction of Science, Politics, and Urban Nature, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2013, p. 90.

3 Wolfram Kunick in his dissertation Veränderung von Flora und Vegetation einer Grossstadt dar­ gestellt am Beispiel von Berlin (West), Berlin 1974, was the first to lay down a comprehensive botanical survey on a regular map of the city, in this way re­ defining West Berlin through plant categories found in specific urban situations.

4 Silvan Linden, “Wildwuchs, or the Worth of the Urban Wild”, in: The Word for World is Still Forest, Intercalations 4, Eds.: Anna-Sophie Springer, Etienne Turpin, K Verlag & Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin 2017, pp. 169-177.

5 Like car parks or, to put it polemically, the Berliner Dom.

Editor: Christina Jauernik Proofreading: Judith Wolfframm Design: grafisches Büro