BAUPALAST
A self-build city lab
- Community Based Design
- Artistic Research
- Workshop
Who owns the city? Who designs a city? What does it mean to appropriate the city in which you live and work?
In early 2019 together with ConstructLab and some other actors, we founded the BAUPALAST initiative at ‘Rathausblock’, a model project of Berlin’s urban development for new forms of housing, commercial spaces and the redevelopment of historical buildings, in collaboration with the network of local initiatives of the active civil society. The BAUPALAST initiative was active as an on-site initiative until the beginning of 2021 and was committed to the creation of a process-oriented socio-cultural space that prototypically realizes various uses of the envisioned community-oriented spaces during the construction phase and transforms them into a long-term, self-managed experimental space in the new neighborhood. The reuse of a wooden structure by ConstructLab was considered as a physical support structure for the initiative. However, in the complex neighborhood development, it was not possible to find a location for the multifunctional structure – permitting issues, construction processes, and competition for space stood in the way of the project. As an alternative to the original large, common wooden structure, the BAUPALAST was simply divided into its individual parts. The building workshop is still on site and serves as a support structure for further initiatives. Through the temporary use of an old warehouse – the ‘Adlerhalle’ – various project workshops (construction workshop, bicycle workshop, film and media workshop, a mobile wood-fired oven, a cultural kiosk with readings and an artists’ residence) were created over a period of two years. The reflection of the whole process of this campus of urban practice was guided and documented by stadtstattstrand. A compass was created that can help further urban practitioners to build up their own BAUPALAST…
Residency
In addition to the Baupalast workshops, the residency space offers a temporary working space with a production budget for local public welfare-oriented users and art/cultural practitioners from Berlin, whose work deals with the urban space in a cooperative, interdisciplinary, experimental and site-specific way. The residency is a flexible module in the development process of the BAUPALAST network and makes it possible to work on further thematic fields that arise in the process.
The converted trailer of the Guerilla Architects BASTIAN used for this purpose becomes a satellite of BAUPALAST and makes it possible to swarm out onto the site or into the surrounding neighbourhoods to realise art projects, research and neighbourhood projects and to bring the results back onto the site and into BAUPALAST.
In September and October 2021, visual artist Ahu Dural was a BAUPALAST resident on the Dragoner site, using BASTIAN – the mobile project space – as her studio. She concluded by sharing her experiences, research and new works as part of the exhibition and lecture “neues bauen sw 61”.
For the exhibition, Dural took a look back and forward. She related her previous work to the immediate surroundings of the Rathausblock, telling an autofictional biographical story that resulted in an emotional sculpture. She showed new works – an installation of sculptures combined with texts that she developed over time at the site and through further stories from people in the surrounding area. Sculptures with photos and sketches, as well as the preceding research work during the residency were also exhibited in the mobile project space.
