WELTSTADT

Weltstadt Exhibition
Opening: Friday, 2.5.2014 | 18:00h
Exhibition hours: 3.5.-1.6.2014 | WED-SUN 14:00h to 19:00h
Location: DAZ (German Architecture Center) Köpenicker Straße 48/49, 10179 Berlin


Weltstadt Conference
Saturday, 3.5.2014 | 10:00h to 17:00h
Location: DAZ (German Architecture Center) Köpenicker Straße 48/49, 10179 Berlin


Who creates the city? Who shapes its future? City planning as a highly specialized, centrally organized field is being enhanced, infiltrated or in part superseded by a new and often informal constellation of actors. WELTSTADT aims to provide these activists and initiatives with an international platform to support their mutual exchange. It connects initiatives by the Goethe-Instituts and their local partners worldwide, which all deal with new forms of local city-making questioning mainstream practices of top-down city planning. The projects range from Riga, New York, Johannesburg, Seoul, to Ulan Bator, Belgrade, Dakar, Bangalore, and several cities in Brazil and Southwest Europe. Since 2013 exchange between these WELTSTADT cities has been greatly facilitated through a constantly growing blog, as well as locally-sourced newspapers.

The WELTSTADT conference aims at comparing a spectrum of local solutions to global urban problems. Which elements worked well in one specific context? Can such elements and initiatives be replicated elsewhere? What concepts for a new civil society are emerging in Riga, New York or Ulan Bator? What potentials do performative urban tactics have, whether in Belgrad or Dakar? Will the new middle class in Brazil, Seoul or Bangalore get involved to create a better city? Where do productive interfaces lie between informal and formal, between self-organization and public administration? The WELTSTADT conference offers a common ground for discussion in the context of highlighting the local character and intricacies of city making.


Conference Schedule

10:00h Welcome address by Andrea Zell, Ulrich Hatzfeld, Marta Doehler-Behzadi
Moderation: Matthias Böttger and Angelika Fitz

10:15h New Civil Society
Stagnation in climate policy, vacant properties in the post-industrial city, privatization of public spaces and displacement of socially vulnerable people from the city. Increasing numbers of citizens no longer intend to wait and are taking their future into their own hands. They are repurposing abandoned buildings, trying out resource-saving ways of life and they are demanding their right to the city. How is the self-organization and horizontal linkage between these civil-society actors succeeding? What is the role of new technologies in this process? How can even more citizens become active participants, rather than passive consumers of the city? How is this new civil society changing our cities?

# Davis Kanepe, Cultural Activist, Kanepes Cultural Center, Riga
# Mitchell Joachim, Architect and Professor, New York University
# Purev-Erdene Ershuu, Architect and Lecturer, Mongolian University of Science and Technology

11:15h Informal Formal Strategies
Processes of informal urbanization are often seen as a threat to the planned city. Traditionally a result of rapid growth, informality today also plays a role in the process of shrinking cities. Informality is most often associated with developing countries, although informal strategies are also on the rise within post-industrial societies. So where do the informal and formal meet and merge? Can there be informal tendencies and building processes within formal contexts? What happens if informal structures gradually become formal? Can participatory movements empower local communities in upgrading informal settlements? How can informal cooperative models survive in capitalist modes of production? Is subsistence still a valid motor for urban development? What strategies can be developed to strengthen locally grown infrastructures?

# Luciana Royer, Architect and Urbanist, University of São Paulo
# Claudia Morgado, Architect, BOOM Architects, Johannesburg
# Mauro Gil-Fournier, Architect, estudio SIC-VIC, Madrid

12:15h Coffeebreak

12:30h New Middle Class
Is there a so called “New Middle Class” and if so, what kind of city do they envision? In Brazil, during Lula’s presidency about 40 million people have climbed into the lower middle class and have become an important target for consumerist marketing. But they also strive for security, health and education. Similar phenomena have been seen in India, China, South Africa and South Korea. Is this just a new term to exploit a socially challenged class or is it the beginning of a more equal distribution of power, education and finally wealth? How do its consumerist aspirations conflict with global limits to growth? Will the New Middle Class add to the current problems or will they get involved to create a better city?

# Renato Cymbalista, Urbanist and Professor, University of São Paulo
# Kiho KIM, Engineer and Professor, University of Seoul
# V. Naresh Narasimhan, Architect and Founder, MOD Institute Bangalore


13:30h Lunchbreak

14:30h The City as a Collective Performance
The imperative of the event has not only reached all art genres, but urban development as well. The combination of urban planning and artistic interventions is enjoying a boom. Festivals, Street Art, public interventions, temporary uses - performative strategies are becoming an important method in the conglomerate between design and enactment of the city. How do performative strategies change the practice of city planning? Who are the new actors entering the urban realm? How can they succeed in developing new scenarios for the future of our cities? Can they leave a sustainable trace in urban development or are they in danger of becoming part of the spectacle of the event city?

# Ivan Kucina, Architect and Professor, University of Belgrade
# N’Goné Fall, Architect, Curator and Essayist, Dakar/Paris
# Jonas Büchel, Co-founder Urban Institute, Riga


15:30h Self-Organization and Public Administration
Self-driven urban initiatives are on the rise. Urban development as a centrally-organized expert activity is being complemented and infiltrated by self-organized models. The reasons for such a paradigm shift are manifold, ranging from empty coffers, which invite low-cost projects, to social vacuum as a result of excessively rapid growth. Digital media have increased the demand for transparency and participation. A generation that has grown up with social media claims a greater role in co-authoring the city. What kinds of political and legal frameworks will support participation? What new interfaces with public administration do self-driven initiatives need? And what could city administrations learn from self-organized initiatives?

# Julia Albani, Curator and Director BUREAU N, Berlin/Lisbon
# Ícaro Vilaça, Architect and Urban Activist, Salvador/São Paulo
# Maja Popović, Architect, Failed Architecture, Belgrade/Amsterdam
# Ulrich Hatzfeld, German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB)

17:00h Farewell - Outlook



Conference Participants


Julia Albani
is an independent curator and director of the communications agency BUREAU N (Berlin/Lisbon). Since 2003 she has supervised exhibition projects, event sites and publications in the fields of architecture, design and urbanism, first at urban drift in Berlin, then as project and business manager at the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel. In 2009 she was invited to join the Board of Trustees of the Architecture Triennial in Lisbon, where she has lived ever since. In 2010 she curated the Portuguese Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice. She is a freelance correspondent for international architecture magazines and co-curator for We-Traders in Lisbon.

Jonas Büchel
is the co-founder of the Urban Institute Riga and local curator of the Weltstadt project Empty Spaces in Riga. Büchel studied photography and design at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund with continuing studies in social work, social planning and cultural management, first in Bochum, than finishing at the Alice-Salomon University in Berlin. He has 25 years of design, social work and creative urbanism practice in nearly all European regions as well as in Asia and the Caucasian region. In the last 15 years he has been concentrating on Berlin, Croatia, Bosnia i Herzegovina, Central-Finland and the Baltic States, specifically Latvia and its capital Riga.
His creative foci are wmotions and time as well as the individual vs. the group. The creative tools he uses range from community development, urbanism to environmental perceptions and photography. To observe and analyze, finally to foster individual and social freedom is the central core of his work.

Renato Cymbalista
is an architect and urbanist. He was the coordinator of Urbanism at Instituto Pólis, a São Paulo based NGO. He was granted his Phd at the School of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo, in 2006 and holds a post-doc in History (University of Campinas, 2010). Cymbalista is a professor of Urban History and History of Urbanism at the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo. He was visiting scholar at the ISCTE Lisboa (2004), Universidade Nova de Lisboa (2005-6) and John Carter Brown Library (2013). He was also visiting Professor at the BTU Cottbus (2008) and at the Université Paris Diderot - Paris VII (2014). Currently he works in the research group “São Paulo: cidade, espaço, memória” (University of São Paulo). Renato Cymbalista was co-curator of the São Paulo Workshop of the Weltstadt project Nós Brasil! We Brazil! in 2013.

Purev-Erdene Ershuu
is currently finishing his PhD in Engineering and the Civil engineering and Architecture School, Mongolian University of Science and Technology (MUST). He holds a Master of Engineering in Urban and Regional Planning, from TUT in Aichi, Japan, and a Master in Architecture from MUST. Ershuu is lecturer at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology and teaches in the fields of Architectural Design, History of Architecture, Interior Design of Civil Architecture. Purev-Erdene Ershuu is part of the Weltstadt Ulan Bator project Nomad City.

N’Goné Fall
is an independent curator, an essayist and a consultant in cultural policies. Fall graduated from the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. She has been the editorial director of the Paris-based contemporary African art magazine Revue Noire from 1994 to 2001. She edited books on contemporary visual arts and photography in Africa including An Anthology of African Art: The Twentieth Century, Photographers from Kinshasa and Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography: a century of African photographers. Fall curated exhibitions in Africa, Europe and USA. She was one of the curators of the African photography biennale in Bamako in 2001 and a guest curator of the 2002 Dakar biennale. As a consultant in cultural policies she is the author of strategic plans, orientation programs and evaluation reports for Senegalese and international cultural institutions. Fall is an associate professor at the Senghor University in Alexandria, Egypt (master department of cultural industries). She is also a founding member of the Dakar-based collective GawLab, a platform of research and production in the field of technology applied to artistic creativity.


Mauro Gil-Fournier E.
is an architect. Gil-Fournier is the Co-founder of Estudio SIC and co-creator of the open platform VIC Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas interested in all that is related to informal city processes and developments, design and urban studies. His work was awarded and exhibited recently in the II Biennale dello Spazio Pubblico Rome 2013 (Italy) and Architectural Lisbon Triennale 2013 (Portugal). He is a Research Fellow on advanced studies of architectural projects on ETSAM where he was a Lecturer in the academic year of 2010-2011. Actually he is a PhD candidate on the thesis about “Exteriorityless architecture”. He is a renowned national and international lecturer whose work on architectural and urban issues have received many awards and have been published internationally. He was also a member of the Jury of the Munich 2011 Detail Prize and this last year he was TED speaker. Mauro Gil-Fournier is part of the Weltstadt project We-Traders. Swapping Crisis for City in Madrid.

Mitchell Joachim
PhD, is Co-Founder of Terreform ONE and Associate Professor at NYU. He was formerly an architect at Gehry Partners, and Pei Cobb Freed. He is a TED Senior Fellow and has been awarded fellowships with Moshe Safdie and Martin Society for Sustainability, MIT. He was chosen by Wired magazine for “The Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To”. Rolling Stone magazine honored Mitchell in “The 100 People Who Are Changing America”. Mitchell won many awards including; AIA New York Urban Design Merit Award, Victor Papanek Social Design Award, Zumtobel Group Award, History Channel Infiniti Award for City of the Future, and Time Magazine Best Invention with MIT Smart Cities. Dwell magazine featured him as “The NOW 99” in 2012. He earned a Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MAUD Harvard University, M.Arch. Columbia University. Mitchell Joachim was co-curator of the New York Weltstadt project Cities and Citizenship.

Dāvis Kaņepe
is a film director and cultural activist. He is the founder of culture center Kaņepes Kultūras centrs in Riga that has collaborations with more than 120 non- and governmental organizations. He is co-initiator of the urban movement freeriga2014.lv, the urban culture cooperation creative quarters and territory association, and co-organizer of several music festivals in Riga.

Kiho KIM
studied Architecture and Urban Planning at Seoul National University and TH Aachen. He worked at Space Group of Korea and HP&P as an Architect.KIM is a former Member of the Urban Planning Committee of the City of Seoul. Currently, he is president of the Dosiyondae (Urban Action Network, NPO). Since 1989, he is Professor of Urban Planning and Design in the University of Seoul. Major Interest; Historic Preservation, Participatory Planning. Kiho KIM is part of the Weltstadt Seoul project Changsumaeul – The Village of Long Life.

Ivan Kucina
is a Serbian architect and professor at the University of Belgrade. He is also a guest professor at Parsons School of Design, New York, Dessau Institute of Architecture, Anhalt University, and Polis University, Trana. In 2006, he co-founded the Belgrade International Architecture Week and currently serves as its Program Director and in 2012 he founded the Urban Transformation program at Mikser which promotes citizens’ participation in changing their cities. In 2013 he joined the Urban Incubator: Belgrade and founded the School of Urban Practices, an organization that is operating in the transdisciplinary field between academic education and activism. Ivan Kucina’s primary goal is to learn from the environment in order to act as an initiator of its development. He views the environment as a heterogeneous entity, a medium much broader than architecture. As an architect working in a time of transition he is interested in the processes of transition in architecture and urbanism.

Claudia Morgado
is a practicing architect (M Arch prof WITS 2007) and part-time lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, working in the 1st and 3rd year design studios. In 2009 Claudia formed BOOM Architects in partnership with Eric Wright. Their work explores urban and people focused concepts with a critical underpinning – the relevance of contemporary architectural urban approaches.
Both partners at BOOM are co-founders of the (in)formal studio, in collaboration with 26’10 south Architects, Thorsten Deckler and Anne Graupner, and have implemented the Marlboro South course held in 2012. (in)formal studio is a multidisciplinary platform which pools resources and skills on in-situ teaching, research and actual projects located in complex urban conditions. Claudia Morgado was part of the Weltstadt Johannesburg project Informal Studio: Marlboro South.

Naresh V Narasimhan
is a fellow of the Indian Institute of Architects. Naresh V Narasimhan is a practitioner and leader with over 28 years of experience in architecture and urban design. He is best known for his association with Venkataramanan Associates (www.vagroup.com) – an award winning architecture firm that saw a rise under his leadership. Naresh studied architecture at Manipal Institute of Technology followed by a management program at Harvard Institute for International Development. As an urbanist, activist and creative entrepreneur, his contribution to urban development has been far-reaching. As co-founder of MOD (an international collective of urban designers, researchers and curators), founder & trustee of Imagine Bangalore and founder of Cobalt (a new concept of a work and meeting space that facilitates serendipitous encounters) Naresh has fuelled a variety of progressive causes in the city. He regularly advises government bodies on infrastructure development. His interests range from socio-economic modeling, knowledge-sharing and communication strategies to cinema, art and popular culture. Naresh is also a prolific speaker & writer who has been published widely. Naresh V Narasimhan has been part of the Weltstadt Bangalore project Nextbangalore.

Maja Popovic
is an architect. She studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Utrecht and at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam. After working for several years in diverse offices in Amsterdam she moved to Belgrade where she guided initiatives related to the research and activation of a significant but severely neglected area in the city. She is interested in socio-political processes and their influence on built environment mainly within historical city quarters and heritage sites. She acts through the fields of scientific and artistic research, workshop activities, cultural and community activism and curation. Maja Popovic is a team member of a research platform Failed Architecture from Amsterdam and currently a board member of the Weltstadt project Urban Incubator: Belgrade.

Luciana Royer
Graduated in architecture and urban planning from the School of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo (FAU - USP). She wrote her PhD on the financialization of housing policy. Since its founding in 1997, she participates in the Laboratory of Housing and Human Settlements FAU - USP. Luciana Royer was Project Manager at the Ministry of Cities and Executive Secretary of the Municipal Housing Council of São Paulo. She served as a coordinator of special programs at Caixa Econômica Federal in 2003. Currently she teaches urban planning at FAU - USP. Lucian Royer was part of the final Nós Brasil! We Brazil! workshop in São Paulo.

Ícaro Vilaça
is a São Paulo-based architect and urbanist interested in participatory processes and urban activism. He graduated from the Federal University of Bahia (FAU UFBA), where he has served as a professor of architectural design. He is currently doing a Master of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (FAU USP), with a research focus on participatory processes. Since 2010, he joined the staff of ‘Grupo Técnico de Apoio’, an institution based in São Paulo that develops studies, plans and services focused on improving the environment and the living conditions of low-income people, working on urbanization, housing provision and technical assistance to social movements and governments. Ícaro Vilaca was local curator in Salvador of the Brasil Weltstadt project Nós Brasil! We Brazil!