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ADIP

ARCHITECTURE DESIGN

INNOVATIO

N PROGRAM

SUMMER SEM

ESTER 2014

PROF. RAINER HEHL

THE URBAN VILLAGE

SPECIAL INTEREST ZONE

Semester Program2014

TRANSFER

HOW DO IDEAS TRAVEL?

The ever-same design of airports, shopping malls and exclusive residential enclaves lets us experience cities as generic places that seem to be replicating globally without any hint of local identity. At the same time we can observe forms of urban design that answer to very specific local contexts as people are increasingly self-organizing and appropriating their everyday environments.

To mediate between the generic and the local in our hyper-complex world, we not only require a global point of view but also need to develop instruments that can help us to connect these different spheres, be they built in the spirit of the generic or upon particular lifestyles and local tastes. Thus, design innovation ultimately has to deal with a transfer of surplus value (1), allowing for innovative design practices to have an impact on architectural design through transforming generic concepts according to the specific conditions of the local context.

With this, let’s put aside the individual effort of an architect’s vision for a moment and consider the fact that innovation is really happening when ideas travel. That it’s not the genius of a single mind but the recombination and translocation of ideas that spark innovation.

After a first semester on the topic „The City Within the Building“ the program of the ADIP guest-professorship will investigate different „Urban Villages“ between Shenzhen/China, São Paulo/Brazil, TiranaAlbania, Indore/India, Dhaka/Bangaladesh, Hanoi, Vietnam, etc. — in order to identify exemplary practices that can be translocated to other environments. Looking at emerging urban economies, the investigation and design proposals will not be limited to the definition of national boundaries, but rather redraw the map of interrelations between cities and regions. Looking at how exemplary concepts and ideas can be translated and adapted to new conditions; in this context design innovation will be considered as a cross-border, transcultural practice.

ADIP – Architecture Design Innovation Program Prof. Dr. Rainer Hehl


SURPLUS TRANSFER — ROUNDABOUT

The series of talks under the title „How Do Ideas Travel?“ will investigate the various modes of being influenced, affected, inspired and contaminated by foreign ideas. Architects, planners, researchers, historians, futurologists, politicians and urban activists are invited to discuss the question referring to their own practice.

For the second session, the series kick off with an input keynote by Rainer Hehl and Ludwig Engel, followed by a presentation of the architecture practice Zanderroth. Invited guests: Nikolai von Rosen, Kristien Ring (AA Projects), Christian Schöningh (Entwicklungsgenossenschaft Tempelhofer Feld) and others will discuss different modes of innovation transfer with staff members from the Architecture Institute of the TU Berlin.

The talks will take place every other second Thursday at 18pm in front of the Architekturforum.

The presentation of the guests will be followed by a public discussion.

PIV — Project Integrated Seminar

For the summer semester 2014 the ADIP program is collaborating with FG Sociology by Prof. Martina Löw. The project integrated seminar (PIV) will introduce sociological methods for the research of specific urban milieus. The seminar work will be part of the first two week‘s investigations on the reference projects.

(1) The term „transfer of surplus value“ usually refers to the capitalist mode of production through the proliferation of excess value for capital accumulation. Rather than reinvesting surplus value within the capitalist mode of production in order to increase private profits, it is questioned here whether excess value should be used for collective interests such as common goods.


EMERGING URBAN ECONOMIES

Emphasizing on Emerging Urban Economies – border zones between informal and formal practice – the first year of the next ADIP professorship is launching a series of innovative research and design projects aiming at discovering the next generation of architects and urban designers.According to Ananya Roy, scholar for international development and global urbanism, „new geographies“ of imagination and epistemology emerge in the countries of the global South shedding a different light on the production of the city that put in question the dominance of the EuroAmerican discourse in urban theory. „Against the ‚regulating fiction‘ of the First World global city“ Ananya Roy calls for „a robust urban theory that can overcome the ‚asymmetrical ignorance‘.“(2)

Building-up on the paradigmatic shift in urban theory, surplus transfer is investigating 3 different types of cross-border transfer: 1st - spatial/morphological, 2nd - programmatic/technological, and, 3rd - cultural/contextual (see Fig.1–4).

(2) Ananya Roy 2009, The 21st-Century Metropolis; New Geographies of Theory, Regional Studies, Vol.43, Issue 6, Routledge, New York

spat

ial

morph

olog

ical

cultura

l

contex

tual

programmatic

technological

Fig.1


Fig.2

Fig.4

Fig.3

Fig.1 Diagram showing 3 different types of surplus transfer. In each case the transfer can vary between different degrees of tranlation/transformation. Fig.2-4 Illustrations for the 3 areas of transfer. Sources: 2:Venturi, Rauch&Scott Brown/3:Brasil Arquitetura, Praça das Artes/4:Diagram for self-help construction by John Turner


formal/ (C1) Housing Complex/Monterrey, Mexicoinformal (C2) Yurt Settlement/Ulan Barto, Mongolia (C3) Previ Settlement/Lima, Peru (C4) Extended Socialist Housing/Tirana, Albania

formal (B1) Toulou Housing Project/Shenzhen, China (B2) Space Block/Hanoi, Vietnam (B3) Aranya Low-Cost Housing/Indore, India (B4) Pearl Bank Apartments/Singapore

informal (A1) Urban Village/Shenzhen, China (A2) Jardim Colombo/São Paulo, Brazil (A3) Geneva Camp/Dhaka, Bangladesh (A4) Floating City Makoko/Lagos, Nigeria

Fig.5 Reference Projects

A1 A4

B1 B4

C1 C4

A2

B2

C2

A3

B3

C3

THE URBAN VILLAGE

Urban Villages, fragmented enclaves in the middle of the urban fabric, are common phenomena within today‘s rapidly urbanizing world. In many cases urban villages are developing in urban niches, in-between spaces and cultural and economic zones that are organized according to their own principles or certain modes of self-organization. Very often these enclaves preserve a certain identity while the surrounding is affected by massive transformation processes. They are forming their own social milieus that contribute to the richness as well as the conflict potential of heterogeneous urban environments.

Even though most of the urban villages of today’s can be categorized as ‘informal cities’, they follow in many cases very formal rules – these rules are just different from what is largely understood as the official formal system. Whether we look at the urban villages in China, suburban commuter towns of today’s massively growing Megacities or at informal developments within the global South, villages within the city are part of the urban landscape and play a major role in providing affordable housing and other services that cannot be guaranteed anymore by official governments or markets. From this perspective the favelas in Brazil or the urban villages in China can be interpreted as areas of parallel governance following their own set of rules but being imbedded in the same time in other legal, administrative, economic and social frameworks. Governments are more and more recognizing these parallel systems as they play a major role for providing low-cost housing, urban services (such as micro-commerce) and a certain sense of community building or cultural identity. In the case of Brazil zoning laws have been altered by introducing “Special Zones of Social Interests”. Within these zones official regulations (such as fire restrictions or social housing standards) can be suspended in order to allow urban planning to adapt to the specific conditions of the given context.


Self-organization is nowadays even getting more and more attractive in the context of Berlin. The increasing number of initiatives that are currently occupying some niches in the urban fabric under the label of “building groups” (Baugruppen) or cooperatives (Genossenschaften) can be seen as counter models to a dominant system of value production that do not provide space for alternative living models.

The SURPLUS TRANSFER program will investigate for the summer semester 2014 urban villages in many different contexts across the world in order to identify the specific qualities of these settlements. After a concentrated analysis the main concepts of these urban villages will be transferred and translated to selected sites in Berlin.

By introducing “Special Interest Zones” new rules have to be established according to certain social and cultural profiles, allowing the development of alternative spatial and programmatic configurations. The transfer operation is therefor informed by two sides: on one hand the reference project will give a new (spatial, programmatic and cultural) input – on the other hand the selected site in Berlin with it’s specific qualities and future populations will represent the backdrop on which communities will be formed according to the principles of parallel urban governance. Rather than representing villages in the traditional sense, these urban villages have to be designed as complementary living models to the existing urban fabric following their own identities and cultural values.


THE URBAN VILLAGE


Fig.6 Urban Village in Shenzhen, China

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