area

DRAGONER AREAL, BERLIN

Dragoner Areal is a key area in the heart of Kreuzberg, one of the last plots available for development. It is the nucleus of a Regeneration area (Sanierungsgebiet Rathausblock) that was planned to be sold by the Institute for Federal Real Estate to private investors. It has been the object of a mobilisation of citizens against the privatisation, and after a series of controversial negotiation its property has been transferred to the Berlin government in 2019. Project models were planned and met with enthusiasm by both citizens and several stakeholders, collaborating to advance solutions that could foster social equality and ecological empowerment to the neighborhood. However, a recent sentence from the Berlin-Brandburg Tribunal has declared the reasons behind the transaction of the Dragoner Areal to the Berlin state as illegal. Therefore, the future of the place is still undecided.

Berlin · codesign · housing · kreuzberg · participation · urban regeneration

RAW-GELÄNDE FRIEDRICHSHAIN

A Prussian railway workshop, a Cold War industrial wasteland, a contemporary socio-cultural center in the heart of Berlin Friedrichshain. The area is emblematic of collective and informal processes of creative transfomation reinventing Berlin’s urban landscape. The R.A.W. in Berlin-Friedrichshain was originally serving as a railway workshop in the XIX century. After being damaged during World War II and undergoing various transformations, it became a neglected wasteland in post-unification Berlin. In 1999, the RAW-Tempel association repurposed the site for artistic and cultural activities, aiming to create a vibrant hub for creativity and community engagement. In 2015, the Kurth Group acquired ownership of R.A.W. and recognized its potential for investment and urban development. Unlike other financial actors, the new owner aimed to respect the site’s identity and socio-cultural programs, giving long-term residents more control over their pre-existing properties. Establishing a participatory approach to urban planning, new plans for the R.A.W. Tower, a 100-meter-tall building, was set to be constructed starting in 2024. The project is intended to blend with older activities, integrating new offices, green areas, markets, and other services, with the R.A.W.’s role as a cultural institution. However, concerns about power dynamics and possible future compromises between top and bottom interests revolving around the R.A.W. might still challenge the current collaborations between the community and external investors.

Berlin · cultural industries · cultural regeneration · friedrichshain · nightlife · urban regeneration

Cuvrybrache, Berlin

A wasteland along the Spree river, that soon became a place of refuge for those with no place in society. Evacuated from its informal inhabitants, the area has undergone restructuring to host a complex of luxury buildings. This piece of land of 10,000 square meters located near the river Spree remained for years an empty lot in which a configuration of multiple actors were trapped in the contradictions and oddities of post-modernity, as practices of meaning-making were being played out in a dead-end struggle to assert claims over the identity of such urban void. The complexities of the social dynamics that have constantly defined and erased the use of the Cuvrybrache throughout the years unfold on several overlapping layers. The most visible of these strata is the conflict for the material control of space, which mostly involves those who envision the Cuvrybrache as an appealing potential to generate economic capital and the Kreutzberg neighborhood, which attaches a cultural value to the territory, whose story is worth to be outlined briefly.

activism · Berlin · blu · contested space · gentrification · graffiti · kreuzberg · media spree · street art · urban development

PIAZZA ILARIA ALPI-LATINA

Located in the south-eastern part of the city of Latina, Piazza Ilaria Alpi is one of the place identified by the UPPER UIA project in Latina as a demonstration site for the planting of new plant species to counteract the increase in temperature, linked to the heat island effect. Tesserae was responsible for the co-design activitiies of the project.

Latina · NBS · public space · uia

MILDMAY – LONDON

WHERE AND WHEN? Mildmay, Islington, London, UK. From 2018. Involvement in the Comensi project. WHAT’S GOING ON? Mildmay has recently become a preferential target for real estate investment, and it has seen a rapid increase in the number of affluent peope decidig to move in the ward. The new inbalance between housing supply and demand has broght […]

BAIRRO DA AJUDA – LISBON

Influences from bordering neighborhoods and recent intervention are slowly changing its features. Through collaboration with local partner 4change, Tesserae is involved in several projects that have their research focus here, namely URBEX and COMENSI. WHERE AND WHEN? Bairro Da Ajuda, Lisbon, Portugal. From 2018. WHAT’S GOING ON? The BairroAjuda is one of the 25 local municipalities/parishes that constitute […]

bairro da ajuda · comensi · Lisbon · urbex

HALLE (SAALE) – AM SÜDPARK

In 2012-1015 Laura Colini participated at IRS Leibnitz Institut in a research on Halle-Neustadt directed by Matthias Berndt and Daniel Först. This former East-German city has experienced two waves of privatization, leading to a complete change of ownership structures, marked by the rise of financial investors. Cuts have put increasing pressure on welfare recipients to live in […]

Berlin · DDR · germany · Halle-Neustadt · modernism · periphery · shrinking city · social housing

PRINZESSINNENGARTEN – BERLIN

Starting from an urban gardening project, the experience of Prinzessinnengarten extended to a wide range of innovative practices, political stances and networking activities fostering a DIY integrated approach. Since 2020, the gardens occupy two distinct areas, both organized on principles of self-sufficiency, food-independence and social inclusivity: the original site located in Moritzplatz (Berlin-Kreuztberg) and the recent acquisition of San Jacobi cemetery (Berlin-Neukölln). The Prinzessinnengarten project promotes gardening as a practice of community building and social emancipation from urban neo-liberal dynamics, while also offering its visitors and members a wide range of cultural and educational activities aimed at sharing different forms of knowledge and skills and at raising consciousness on current ecological issues and social challenges.

Berlin · commons · DIY · gentirification · Prinzessinnen Garten · public space

MEHRINGPLATZ – SÜDLICHE FRIEDRICHSTADT

Suffering from its marginalized position during the years of the German division, the neighborhood was recognized and labelled as a deprived area in 2005 due to its low standards of economic development, its poor social integration and quality of life. These characteristics made the territory of Südliche Friedrichstadt a periphery in the centre of Berlin, as the area is located in the proximity of some of the city’s main attractive spots, such as the lively Mitte and the creative Friedrichschain-Kreutzberg. In a twenty-year time-span, a set of policies of local urban renewal has been gradually implemented to re-centralize the neighborhood, starting from the very re-centralization of the role of its residents in directly participating in small decision-making processes. This served to acknowledge, create and institutionalize their identity as a geo-social collectivity. Commercial, leasure and creative initiatives have begun to flourish in the area, projecting it as an emblem of juxtapositions and contradictory tendencies characterizing modern urban contexts, whereby transitions to new lifestyles are mediated by old identites and latent risks of gentrification, displacement and social conflicts.

Berlin · collaborative mapping · kreuzberg · Mehringplatz · storytelling · urban reconnaissance · urban regeneration

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