Assistant Professor – Studio Prof. Sauerbruch
MOMENTS OF CULTURE. What distinguishes your everyday from a „moment of culture“. Culture in the widest sense has not only to do with the Arts, but its phenomena define the very essence of a community/society. Even when dealing with the Arts you have to name your preferences between „high and low culture“ between E and U between top-down and bottom-up. Whichever you are interested in remember that „a moment of culture“ has to carry a seed or an echo of a collective idea, otherwise it is just a personal pursuit. Try to recall a moment in your life that struck you as a „cultural“ and document it in its most important aspects including space and time.
Assistant Professor – Studio Prof. Wiel Arets
ANTWERP UTOPIA. We will rewrite and discuss the notion of a ‘Utopia’, while simultaneously investigating the future of the World, which will become one large metropolis, as our global and local societies and their metropolitan areas drastically change due to of current developments. We will focus on Antwerp as a ‘battle-ground’, and its ability to function as an example for a new Utopian society. (Hauptstudium)
TOKYO UTOPIA. During this Semester we will rewrite and discuss the notion of a ‘Utopia’, while simultaneously investigating the future of the World, which will become one large metropolis, as our global and local societies and their metropolitan areas drastically change due to of current developments. We will focus on Tokyo as a ‘battle-ground’, and its ability to function as an example for a new Utopian society. Japan as a traditional and technological advanced society; Japan as a country isolated for so long; Japan, with its own specific reality, could be seen as our reference. (Grundstudium)
Studio Prof. Wiel Arets
A NEW MAP OF THE WORLD. Where are cities headed as new networks unfold in post global era? We opened the seminar looking at Lewis Mumford‘s early work on neighbourhoods, where we learned that neighbourhoods are networks, anchored to a specific part of a specific city. As we have watched social networks transcend spatial confines in the last decade, we found ourselves trying to understand what the meaning of these local, sometimes tenuous social matrices was in a globalised, electronically networked world. Throughout this seminar we were trying to define strategies and devices, which should lead us to a desription of „A new map of the world“. We discussed the influence on cities by the growing number of people living in them. What makes us living in cities? Which factors contribute to an economically, culturally and socially successful city? Which meaning have the suburbs for a city? Where do they start? How important is a well-functioning network, with regard to social as well as to infra structural aspects? Which role plays distances between us and our working places, between us and people from different interests, background or level of income? Is the „eye on the street“ still as important as Jane Jacobs mentioned in her book „The Death and Life of great American Cities“ in 1961? What have the described ghettos in Venice by Richard Sennett in common with Gated Communities nowadays? What defines a Gated Community? Could we define a skyscraper or a „Berliner Mietshaus“ as a Gated Community? How important is the recognisable identity of neighbourhoods within a city?