The international Summer School Berlin 2019 ’prototyping collaborative spaces’ has brought a lot of life and new faces to the B-Part Am Gleisdreieck during the last two weeks of September. An international team of artists, community leaders and activists from the Colombian metropolis Medellín and students from the TU Berlin has transformed a part of the outdoor area into an urban playground to jointly research what constitutes public space and how it can be developed in co-productive processes. Based on intercultural knowledge transfer a wide range of different perspectives have come together: German architecture students and Colombian community leaders from the informal neighbourhood of Moravia exchanged their experiences and discussed, developed and constructed jointly.
Based on the design-build method, at which the designing and the building process is conceived as one unit and ideas do not lead just to plans and sketches but also to interventions in an 1:1 scale, a contemporary interpretation of the ‘agora‘ has been built – an interactive space for flexibel uses. The goal was to develop a light and modular structure that enables an easy and fast transformation into different spatial scenarios. Afestival has been organized on the last day of the summer school to test its multifunctional adaptability by offering various spatial constellations that host manifold spaces of exchange for different activities. In the framework of the festival the agora structure served as arena for a talk format and as exhibition space for a sound installation that constrasted everyday noises from Moravia and from Berlin in an interesting interplay and for a photo exhibition. Furthermore it provided a stage for the multifarious music program: from Colombian hip-hop to a gipsy band to a beatbox show.
After a short intermezzo as a canteen where a Colombian soup has been served, the agora found a new vocation as open air cinema. The documentary movie ‚Sessiones Tropicales’ that has been filmed three months ago in Moravia celebrated its European premiere in the B-Part Am Gleisdreieck. This diverse and colorful festival day ended with a final transformation of the agora to prove its potential as dance floor. Despite the bad weather the festival attracted many visitors and marked a wonderful conclusion of two weeks of intense collective effort.
Besides the agora two artistic interventions have been realized during the international summer school. The mural ‘Raices’ (roots) of the Colombian artist Dubian Monsalve Torres – a beautiful jaguar in front of a tropical background – now decorates the trailer on the left hand side of the B-Part. A vivid installation on the fence made of woven colorful ribbons unites in an abstract way Indian motives with Colombian nature scenes. A real eye-catcher that has already awaken a lot of interest and curiosity of visitors in the Park am Gleisdreieck during the production process. This installation with the title ’Tejidos’ (fabrics) is a co-production of the Berlin based Colombian artist Carolina Amaya and the Colombian artist Julian Gonzales Arias. Both artworks are open for the public for the time being in the outdoor space of B-Part Am Gleisdreieck.
Another summer school highlight was a collective cooking event in the outdoor space of B-Part Am Gleisdreieck with the mobile kitchen ‚Cocina Popular‘. Our Colombian-German participants came together with Polish participants of another parallel summer school organized by our B-Part colleagues Germantech. We snipped and cooked jointly and spread hundreds of tasty Tacos among the visitors of this public event.
The international Summer School Berlin 2019 has been organized by the Urban Ideation Lab at B-Part Am Gleisdreieck in cooperation with the Natural Building Lab at TU Berlin and the collective Urban Oasis.
For more information, photos and videos of this colorful idea workshop check our Instagram account @bpart_berlin!