Instructor:
Course: Reconceptualizing the Urban: Berlin as Laboratory
Students: Students: Pedro Aparicio, Xiaodi Yan, Shiqing Liu, Claudia Tomateo, Eliyahu Keller
Observing a period of ideological struggle between the Western allies and the Eastern Bloc, this research aims to look at various architectures and urban plans as emblems of this political struggle. Focusing on objects rather than grand plans, we assume the method proposed by Mattias Ungers’ ‘Green Archipelago’ from 1977: the singular urban artefact, whether it is a building, a memorial, an infrastructure, or a compound, is scrutinized as a representation of the political ideology hiding behind its form. Through this group of arbitrary ideological islands, the story of Berlin between the end of WWII and the fall of the Berlin wall comes to light in a new way.