Thanks to the Wonderland crew, I spent last week in Berlin touring a cross-section of the city’s most Berlin-ish urban developments. Berlin isn’t the city it was – the relentless teeth of global capital and recession angst have really started to bite in the last few years – but it retains some core values that didn’t fall with the Wall.
Those “core values” include a measured pragmatism that acknowledges that financial benefit isn’t necessarily a social good. The urban landscape (London, I’m looking at you) is increasingly scarred by borderline psychopaths who want to re-shape the city into a playground for themselves and others like them. Berlin has a stronger immune system than that.
A good example of this is a financing policy in which tenders are not granted to the lowest bid; instead a cost is set by the authorities and the most interesting proposal given the tender. Finding the money for “interesting” proposals is another thing entirely, of course – the bizarre role of Swiss pension funds in supporting alternative culture should not be under-stated.
Now obviously I’m a sucker for socially-conscious + environmentally-friendly buildings – the reason I was at Wonderlab was to represent Pametnija Zgrada – but I also retain my core personality trait of being impossible to please. My question is a simple one: does it work? That is: does it live in the real world, rather than in an urbanist’s wet dream?
The Berlin answer is: yes, but only just. Nearly all the projects we visited had benefited from investment that covered site acquisition at reasonable interest rates, so they could start making profit quickly. The inevitable & painful dilemma: alternative cultural approaches are being subsidised by extremely mainstream financial tools (and not just pension funds).
I liked all of the projects, especially ExRotaprint, which seems to get the balance Goldilocks right. Yet it was clear that these types of project don’t necessarily translate well to other contexts – definitely not to other countries (like Serbia) but probably not even to other cities in Germany. We can take inspiration from them, but probably not replicate them.
We spent the rest of our days exchanging experiences between exchanging experiences between projects, a crazy-quilt mix of different approaches to the same problem: the disconnect between people and place. As the world goes urban, this isn’t just an excuse for architects to hold workshops, but the concrete problem that’s going to shape the century.
This is mirrored by the online problem of privacy; to a large extent these twin problems are urban problems. One thing that was noticeable by its absence, then, was any discussion about the smart city – yet Berlin is geared to be a tech hub, and all of the workshop participants were all heavy technology users. I guess that discussion will have to wait until next time.
SITES VISITED
We were hosted by DAZ, whose internet leaves a lot to be desired, but whose hospitality was excellent.
(Apologies for the fully intentional John Mayer reference in title.)
