Berlin

Berlin is the site of new regional and cultural interactions in a reconfigured post-industrial and post-socialist Europe. The subject of intense scrutiny in the 1990s and early 2000s, Berlin is due for renewed scholarly attention. Today, Berlin is one of the prime sites of urban cultural and spatial innovation in Europe, where hybrid forms of urban development are generating new types and processes of urban formation. The Berlin Portal is concerned with the transitional processes and conditions of urbanization in Berlin and the broader cultural and environmental significance of those changes.

Directed by Eve Blau, co-principal investigator of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, the Berlin Portal is composed of a core team of Harvard professors and advanced graduate students from the Graduate School of Design and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. We are working together with Berlin-based scholars and practitioners, on collaborative projects that focus on five strategic research themes:

  • the interdependence of formal and informal planning practices;
  • nature and agriculture in the city;
  • the urban imprint of cross-border mobility and migration;
  • infrastructure and urban organizational systems; and
  • innovation in the post-industrial and post-socialist city.

Combining the research methods from the humanities, social sciences, and the design disciplines, these various projects incorporate new visual and digital methods for the study of urban environments, while also productively combining teaching tools from a variety of academic disciplines.

Courses

Fieldwork

Bauhaus / Dessau

As part of the field trip to Berlin, the group of students and faculty of the Harvard Mellon Berlin portal paid a visit to the historic Bauhaus complex and foundation in the city of Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius, one of the founders of the Bauhaus and the chair of the architecture department at the Harvard...

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Berlin Fieldwork June 2016

This summer, four graduate research assistants – Igor Ekštajn, Eli Keller, Michael Keller, and Namik Mackic undertook a two-week field trip to Berlin together with portal director Eve Blau and affiliated faculty Max Hirsh. The objective of the visit was to gather base information on a number of key research sites in...

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Socialist East Berlin

Together with historian Andreas Butter, HMUI Berlin portal visited and studied the centerpiece in the former East Berlin’s urban layout and the built environment of the former DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) more broadly. The tour focused on the major urban project of the post-WWII era in East Berlin – the...

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The Turkish Quarters Of Berlin

The student researchers and faculty of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative Berlin Portal returned to the district of Kreuzberg, this time with Dr. Barış Ülker of the Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Technical University Berlin. This perspective on the neighborhood focused on the profound...

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Student Work

Refugees Welcome

Instructor: Eve Blau
Course: Reconceptualizing the Urban: Berlin as Laboratory
Students: Eli Keller

This project takes a closer look at the current influx of refugee population into Berlin.  It aims to investigate the networks created by the refugees as well as by the...

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Collaborators

 

PROF. KEES CHRISTIAANSE- CHAIR OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN

At ETH Zürich and FCL Singapur, the Architecture and Urban Design course led by Prof. Kees Christiaanse examines global contemporary processes of urbanization. Our team participates in national and international research programs, works on SNF-sponsored doctorates, and on non-university project collaborations. We place special focus on linking research, teaching, and practice.

We use a variety of methods to address questions regarding the urban phenomenon. The design strategies of the urban research studios particularly allows for a holistic and solution-oriented observation of current spatial processes.

HOCHSCHULE FÜR TECHNIK, WIRTSCHAFT UND KULTUR LEIPZIG

With about 5,900 students, HTWK Leipzig is Saxony’s largest University of Applied Sciences and one of the largest in Germany. For more than two hundred years, the University and its predecessors have been providing high-quality, career-relevant education in a diverse range of fields through innovative courses, excellent teaching and state-of the art facilities.

Based in the trade fair city of Leipzig, we are committed to forging partnerships with industry and government to deliver practical results through focused research. With a campus located right in the heart of Leipzig’s most popular student neighbourhood, students at HTWK Leipzig may enjoy an ideal combination of outstanding academics and vibrant student life.

STIFTUNG BAUHAUS DESSAU

The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation was founded in 1994 with the mission to maintain the Bauhaus heritage to explore and convey, at the same time but also to assume the problems of today’s living environment. The Foundation will collect items, “documenting the Ideengut the historic Bauhaus and open”, allowing the planning work of the workshop and develop the academy as a pillar of the Teaching. Conferences and seminars and exchanges with foreign experts and students from different disciplines complement the Foundation Profile.

In fact, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation has developed over the years of its existence as an important science and research center for the Bauhaus history and design problems of the present. The Bauhaus Dessau is an impulse-giving source for Architecture, Design and Performing Arts.

 

INSTITUT FÜR EUROPÄISCHE ETHNOLOGIE, HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN

European Ethnology is a subject area at the intersection of ethnology and history, the aim of which is the development of an approach analysing and comparing cultures. The focus is the everyday culture of modern European societies; ‘culture’ here means the constant process of practical negotiation of the rules by which people, groups and societies interact, communicate and delimit themselves.

PD Dr Gertrud Hüwelmeier – Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow
https://www.euroethno.hu-berlin.de/de/institut/personen/huewelmeier

At Humboldt- University Berlin, Institute of European Ethnology, anthropologist Dr. Hüwelmeier is teaching courses on urban anthropology and on transnational migration and marketplaces in Berlin and other places. Currently she is directing an ongoing research project “The global Bazaar”, focussing on Asian marketplaces in post socialist cities and in Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

BUNDESSTIFTUNG BAUKULTUR

The Federal Foundation of Baukultur (“Federal Foundation for the Culture of Building”) is a platform for German and international protagonists who operate in the area of Baukultur. As a lobbyist for good planning and building, the foundation aims at heightening awareness and sensibility towards all aspects of the build evironment among an interested public.

The foundation was established by decree in 2006 as a foundation under public law. Its boards were constituted a year later at the founding convention in Potsdam. In 2008 the foundation began its work in Potsdam.

The purpose and objectives of the Federal Foundation of Baukultur are:

  • to make the quality, sustainability and achievements of planning and construction in Germany better known both nationally and internationally
  • to strengthen the awareness of good planning, building, Baukultur and the value of the built environment among those who make buildings and the general public
  • to stimulate discussion throughout the country about quality standards in urban planning, the construction and housing industries

The foundation is supported by annual grant from the federal budget and by the work of the Association of Friends of the Baukultur Foundation, which links the aims of the foundation to its member organizations and individuals.

DEUTSCHES ARCHITEKTURZENTRUM

DAZ is a think-tank, a place for exchange, transmission and debate. In workshops, exhibitions, talks, film nights and book presentations, architects, city planners, artists, citizens, users and critics come together to discuss current issues in architecture, spatial production and urban life.

Who makes the city? asks Creative Director Matthias Böttger in 2015. How can social objectives and formal synthesis, robust responsibility and fragile creativity be combined? How can speculative practice change architecture? Architecture´s task is not only to provide solutions, but to name and describe new challenges. Architecture provides no definitive answers, but remains open for questions – you are cordially invited to share and discuss!

DEUTSCHE FILM- UND FERNSEHAKADEMIE BERLIN

The DFFB is a well-established film academy (founded in 1966). As one of Germany’s oldest film schools it has a long tradition of training creative film industry professionals. Working on a relatively small budget, the DFFB succeeds in striking the right balance between training in the artistic dimension of filmmaking and fostering a commercial understanding in students which can also be seen in the exceptional and extremely professional films by our students.

Its strong links with the European film industry make it well-placed to bring together film students from across the continent, the DFFB has kept pace with the times and its courses are tailor-made to prepare students to work in today’s film and television industry. The DFFB adopts a pioneering approach to practice-based film training. The DFFB’s professional level courses are structured to focus on the key tools of the trade in filmmaking: directing, scriptwriting, production and cinematography. The DFFB also sets particular store by the vital creative aspects of filmmaking.

The DFFB has operated a number of exchanges and partnerships with international institutions, organisations and schools, including La fémis (Paris), FAMU (Prague), the London Film School, the Tel Aviv University and the California Institute of the Arts and the Columbia University in the United States.

MINDA DE GUNZBURG CENTER FOR EUROPEAN STUDIES

The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) was founded in 1969 at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences to promote the study of Europe and to facilitate the training of new generations of scholars and experts in European studies in the United States.

CES was created as an interdisciplinary institution in the social sciences to make possible innovative research and teaching on European history, politics, economy and society. For over four decades, the Center has been the site of influential research and has inspired interest in European affairs among Harvard faculty, students and beyond. CES alumni are among the most eminent scholars of Europe in the world today.

TU BERLIN – CENTER FOR METROPOLITAN STUDIES

The city is our research field. Since 2004 the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CMS) at the Technische Universität Berlin has brought together both young and experienced researchers to study the historical developments and current problems of the metropolis in its international graduate research program, the masters program in historical urban studies, and adjunct research projects. The research center and its programs are interdisciplinary and international.

The Center currently focuses on the topics of metropolis and mobility, suburbanization and urban renewal, cultural economies and cultural innovation processes. We view current problems such as security in cities, segregation and polarization from a historical perspective to uncover possible solutions for the present. Historical analysis sharpens our view of the twenty-first-century metropolis.

The Center for Metropolitan Studies looks to bring together academic scholarship and practical research and consulting, to promote younger scholars and to encourage cooperation and communication between various actors in scientific research, economics, politics and civil society. CMS draws upon the experience of the thirty-year-old, internationally acknowledged Research Unit for Urban History of the Technische Universität in Berlin.