Urban Space and Architecture

This intensive two-week course invites you to discover experimental architecture and communicative, social urban space. Explore the diversity and innovation of contemporary Berlin architecture and culture – and develop your own relationship with both theory and practice.

Engage with a variety of exciting DIY+DIT projects including an art gallery in a creatively reused filling station, community gardens and emerging food forests, squats, underground clubs, cultural redevelopments of railyards, a new sustainable housing cooperative on the Spree River, pioneer projects at the former Tempelhof Airport, and many others. Get to know the most interesting projects Berlin has to offer - on foot, with bikes and a boat: Spreefeld, Holzmarkt, Prinzessinnengärten, Markthalle Neun, Teepee Land, F.I.T., ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics, YAAM, Kunstbunker, Jewish Museum, Bauhütte, etc.

Allow your own design impressions of Berlin’s self-organized and community-oriented architecture and urban space to emerge – and exchange your ideas, using photography and drawings, design-build and creative documentation with an exciting and motivated group of young people from around the world.

The course will inspire and involve students with an intensive daily combination of excursions, cultural visits and hands-on design-build actions, readings and discussions. Direct interaction with, observation and interpretation of leading examples will help students develop their own project ideas.

Course leader

Dr. Michael A. LaFond - Director of id22: Institute for Creative Sustainability in Berlin. Born and educated in the US, LaFond has decades of experience in Berlin as well as internationally in fields related to architecture and sustainable community devel

Target group

TAKE PART IF YOU...

-have a strong interest in interactive, participatory and sustainable Architecture
-want to deepen your knowledge in social production of urban space and culture
-have a background, education or interest in art, architecture or sustainable urban studies