Urban Ideation Talk #1: Learning from Spaces

Think circular!

New construction and learning from spaces – that was the first Urban Ideation Talk on 22 August in the B-Part Am Gleisdreieck: Forward-thinkers and pioneers from various disciplines met to report on new concepts for our dealings with rooms and buildings.

Photo (from left to right): Dina Padalkina (circular.berlin), Johannes Stiglmair (trnsfrm.org), Kathleen Wächter (crclr.org), Felix Marlow (hausderstatistik.org), Lennart Siebert (belius.de), Victoria Loyall (renggli-international.com), Helge Kunz (renggli-international.com) © Ian Delu

We are used to thinking buildings statically. They are built to serve a purpose until they have done their duty. Hence the name “property”. In addition, the process is linear: resources are built in, used and finally disposed of. We can say goodbye to this principle in the long term in order to meet the requirements of new urban ways of life and work.

In the case of a station building, a monothematic use may still be justified, but many other forms of real estate belong on the test bench – for example shopping malls, which are usually placed in urban areas like a foreign object and are not known for improving the quality of life of residents. Investors usually do not wonder what effect such a “temple of consumption” has on its surroundings.

But people in densely populated and changing cities are increasingly asking themselves this question. The speakers of the first Urban Ideation Talk in the B-Part Am Gleisdreieck provided the first solution. The new event series is organized by the Urban Ideation Lab and takes place here on a monthly basis.

The Urban Ideation Lab is the heart of B-Part as a laboratory for the urban quarter of the future. Consisting of regularly changing fellow teams, the lab opens up space for entrepreneurs who want to take off with their ideas in an inspiring exchange with others. The first Urban Ideation Talk was initiated by the Lab Fellow Circular Berlin.

To summarize the contributions of the six speakers of the first talk to a simple denominator: Instead of the static concept, the journey goes to the circular process, i.e. to building and use that functions in cycles. Buildings can be planned from the outset in such a way that later conversions and rededications, which were not foreseeable during the planning phase, are also feasible. The aim is to think rooms vividly and to make buildings more flexible, mobile and participative.

The climate change demands a completely new way of dealing with materials and energy. While the construction industry produces large amounts of waste today, it will be necessary to think in terms of conserving resources in the future. The B-Part itself provides an illustrative example of this. Thanks to its modular timber construction, the temporary building can be dismantled after its time in the park at the track triangle and rebuilt elsewhere for a new type of use. The immense CO2 emissions of the steel and cement industry can also be significantly reduced in the future through the increased use of wood as a building material.

In addition, the circular approach also includes a socially balanced approach to space, especially against the background of the real estate market, which is currently causing social tension in our cities. Instead, we need mixed housing and lifestyles across all generations and milieus.

Two examples besides many pilot projects for a new handling of rooms are the CRCLR house in Neukölln – “Berlin’s Ground Zero for everything that has to do with circular economy”. (Ex-Berliner, 2016) – or the model project Haus der Statistik at Alexanderplatz in Berlin.

Therefore, circular building and living spaces require completely new processes, covering all aspects of material cycles and energy efficiency, social balance and openness in a changing and climate-dependent city. For this we need to rethink and also open up completely new spaces in our minds.

On the way there are many challenges for all involved: Not only the construction industry, but also the municipalities and administrations or the investors have to learn completely new approaches and methods. As the first Urban Ideation Talk shows, the journey has only just begun, but it promises to lead to cities worth living in.

More information about the first Urban Ideation Talk can be found on the website of Circular Berlin. You can see the trailer of the event here.