Berlin Unlimited

Berlin, dein Gesicht hat Sommersprossen, Berlin, your face has freckles;

the title of the song from Hildegard Knef from 1966 depicts—25 years after the fall of the wall and almost 70 years after the last war— the outcome of an era of disruption for the city. Along the 20th century Berlin revealed an extraordinary dynamism in response to exceptional circumstances, themselves brought about by a remarkable succession of geo-political events and historical shifts; at different times within the century the city on the river Spree became a capital of the avant-garde, bohemia, social reform, despair, destruction, division, reconciliation, unity, hope, opportunity… The freckles of Berlin trace this constant social and spatial transformation, an urban fabric and its social structure being re-placed, erased, re-organised, over and over again.

For long divided into two

For long divided into two by the spatial and political frontier between the world’s two dominant ideologies at the time, Berlin has in these last 25 years been stitching back its halves. Still, if “one divides into two, two doesn’t merge into one”. By removing the wall entire neighbourhoods in the former suburbs of former West and East Berlin have been transposed onto the present centre of a new Berlin. A unique situation arose where an abundance of otherwise neglected and forgotten spaces were suddenly located at the heart of the new city, available to all kinds of old and new occupants—home-buyers and tenants, residential and commercial developers, companies and investors— pointing to Berlin as the city of newly born ambitions and opportunities. And while this radical regeneration of the inner-city is on its way, progressively filling the gaps and re- appropriating history’s left-overs, the expansion of the greater urban territory stretches Berlin’s self-defining limits. Is a “Great Berlin” replacing the neatly delimited ‘island’ of the past ?

Everything is possible

The unbridled capital, Berlin holds a reputation of a city where everything is possible, where its own scars and voids become a playground for creativity and experimentation for everything from the arts to politics and from architecture to philosophy; a carte blanche of unlimited possibilities. What are the potentialities of this new Berlin and what are the roles and the rules in its new urban play? What future visions are replacing the ideologies of the past? Have its inhabitants found the freedom they were looking for or is an idealised representation disguising much more complex and sometimes conflicting urban realities?

Berlin Unlimited aims to bring together an interdisciplinary collection of work in the arts and creative media, architecture and urban design, theory and research, that reveal, reflect on, challenge, and reform, the limits and the limitations of the city; in its past, present, and future, is berlin limited, unlimited,(un)limited … ?

BERLIN UNLIMITED festival was a transdisciplinary collaboration between Guerilla Architects, CollageLab (Berlin) and Urban Transcripts (London) with the contribution of professionals from almost 20 different countries.

Exhibition Design

How can an exhibition space be thought and designed to favor the diffusion of content? What is the perfect environment for interaction?

Those questions have been at the center of the concept of the design specially tuned for the festival Berlin Unlimited. Happening along a week beginning of October 2014, Berlin Unlimited was a transdisciplinary festival that had the ambition to gather several formats around the questions of the city and its boundaries through Arts, Architecture and Urban Research. Exhibition, symposium, workshops, debates, film screenings, celebrations… all in one space of 300 sqm.

Thought through, designed, produced and experimented, the design showed its value and potential while, only after 2 days, it had already transformed 4 times to host according to the events, different situations of learning and sharing knowledge. Its flexibility, made possible by means of the implementation of simple wooden elements provided the minimum structure for the maximum space. The situations for discussing and exchanging appears in the in-betweens – in the spaces delimited by the open structures – whereas the space configuration adapts with humility and tends to disappear profiting the action.

The inclusion of time in spatial design

There is no limit to conceptualize flexible design. If flexibility can be understood through the modification of spatial configurations, the design of Berlin Unlimited took its concept one step further and incorporated temporal flexibility of the content: constantly evolving through the week, the visitor or passer by who had the chance to experiment the space for several occasions faced also an evolutive display of information as performative projects where taking place around the city. The exhibition space reacted as a displaced mirror of spatial experience across the physical borders of the space and attempted to create an interaction between the space and the numerous distanced experimentations.

Workshop

A 10-strong international tutor team of practicing architects, researchers in architecture and urbanism and artists, was leading the “BERLIN UNLIMITED” workshops. Focusing on Berlin’s actual problematics, the workshop was an interdisciplinary exercise in understanding the urban condition and working towards collaborative solutions.

A memory re-written in light:
the absence of the Berlin Wall

Among Berlin’s ruins, the remaining fragments and voids corresponding to ‘die Berliner Mauer’, the barrier that divided the city between 1961 and 1989, stand as the most significant. The promise of liberation after the fall of the wall and further meanings and memories were reflected in its very left over spaces, but disparate regeneration projects and infrastructure operations started to replace them, leaving just scattered portions of it. Some of them turned into touristic spots, fewer were incorporated in every day’s urban life. Memory, consumption and forgetfulness are hence involved in on-going processes of conservation and renovation.

Although barely existing today as a discontinuous trace, the wall has still a strong presence in the collective memory of city’s inhabitants and the imaginary of its visitors. It is an absent element of identity, a negative monument that haunts contemporary Berlin.

Photography was used as a main tool for registering the explored territory during the workshop and its further editing and manipulation were considered as a way of triggering new interpretations acknowledging the presence/absence of the Berlin Wall. The participants depicted various spatial and social barriers that arose from the reminiscences of the Berlin Wall.

Berlin Imaginarium: Urban Transformation through Storytelling

What makes up the spirit of Berlin and is it already fading away? Or has it found new quarters, parks and alleyways? How fundamental is this narrative of urban exploration, experience and storytelling in context of the quality of life and vitality of the city as such? The stories based on experience are retold and transformed, becoming part of the collective memory, such as the famous tales of brothers Grimm, perhaps the best-known storytellers of folk tales, who lived in Berlin for 20 years. During the workshop will encourage the participants to explore the contemporary tales and legends of Berlin through its urban environment as an experimental ground where limits are constantly re-defined.

The objective of the workshop is to explore the role of storytelling in creativity and city making, bridging the limits between reality and imagination. How can we contribute to the process of changing urban landscapes through storytelling? As designers, we have the power to invent and develop narratives beyond the physical design, in order to engage people and activate urban areas. By storytelling we initiate and enable social exchange, enhancing the quality of urban life. The aim of the workshop will be to create an IMAGINARIUM, where the limits and possibilities converge through storytelling and urban narratives.

The participants were encouraged to explore urban space beyond the visible city fabric, undertaking interviews and performing site specific interventions in order to create a space of the IMAGINARIUM.

The BERLIN UNLIMITED workshop series was organized by Urban Transcripts.