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“I sit alone at my drawing board, trying to design a building. There are memories of smells, the echoes between walls, textures in my fingertips; raised voices arguing their case, quiet gestures of resistance, faces lit in anticipation of possibilities. But my pencil can only draw the lines of habit. Lines, more lines, on white, until the configuration resembles other drawings of buildings I have seen. It is ready to be built, but all I see are the omissions–no history, no location, no corporeality, no contestation–between the geometries. Can there be another place to begin?”

 

– Katie Lloyd Thomas in: Lines in Practice: Thinking Architectural Representation Through Feminist Critiques of Geometry

Back to normal? Mapping a post-crisis counter-inventory

“It means learning to select each segment of this so-called irreversible system, putting a question mark over each of its supposed indispensable connections, and then testing in more and more detail what is desirable and what has ceased to be so.” (Latour)

While we hope for a soon ending of the extraordinary conditions we’re in, we search for spatial strategies for the after. Bruno Latour’s questionnaire serves as an impetus to question the ‘back to normal’: instead, we want to take a critical look at the new realities of the crisis as a testing ground, mapping the spatial and lived alternatives and thus elaborating an inventory of potentials for the post-Corona city. Students from UdK built on their own experience during the Corona crisis and question aspects like working, living, living in the city, …: what spaces have gained importance? What potentials were discovered during the crisis? How did the crisis make spatial inequalities visible? Who has been excluded or isolated?

June 8th 7:00 pm
Public presentation and panel streamed at BHROX

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detoxing masculinities – questioning social structures with non-binary interventions

By Project #2No Comments
Oliver Gudzowski "I feel the overwhelming need to do something to promote a non-hierarchical and non-binary coexistence on this planet" - carraro caterina "For identities defined by to whom one is romantically or sexually attracted, see sexual identity and sexual orientation. Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex at birth or can differ from it. Gender expression typically reflects a person's gender identity, but this is not always the case. While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may...
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private and public space

By Input #2No Comments
voice messages These are personal reports about experiences with private and public spaces. fem_arc · fem_arc STUDIO II: Private and Public Space fem_arc · private & public - Vicente Mateus fem_arc · private & public - Simon Kimmel fem_arc · private & public -Oliver Gudzowski
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Mapping her and my vulnerability

By Project #2No Comments
Simon Kimmel Mapping her and my vulnerability. It reminds me. Of when My flatmate had to go to the hospital during the pandemic. He had a lump in his throat. And he was in pain. We rushed to the hospital. And when I came back home, I felt the urge to go to his room and document the moment. A potato growing in its little pot. A painting by Yuval Frisch facing the unmade bed. A mask hanging from the bedsight light. And I have never shown the photographies to anyone. Just the fact that there is a mask hanging...
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Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst

By Project #2No Comments
Camilla Boß, Beke Bucking With our mapping we attempt to depict an intuitive and temporally indeterminate spatial perception. At three locations in Berlin, Mariannenplatz, Kotti and Tempelhofer Feld, we play the game "I see what you don't see", which usually refers to colours. Instead of colours, we express perceptions and sensitivities; guessing is used to describe the inner and outer space which surrounds us - on the one hand, therefore, the depiction of a normality and, on the other hand, the negotiation, relation and process of a normal condition. fem_arc · fem_arc STUDIO II: I see what you don't see
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Archiving the Non-Normal

By Project #2No Comments
Philipp Preiß, Karla Vandon, Josephine Harold if normal is something subjective which describes a certain constellation of things, we know… …now, in the pandemic we seem to be more aware of changes and seem to have a larger perception of change in the sense of how it used to be and how it is now, all agreeing not on what is normal but that right now it is not. if we then see the normal as something that is constantly changing, we could abandon this term and accept the constant state of none-normal... to see this crisis as an eye...
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woman night

Back to the Streets

By Project #2No Comments
Jordan Paul, Maria Arez, Nursena Yildiz, Vicente Mateus mappingsafetywise...  Urban/Pedestrian safety is still something that varies from person to person. We are not going back to normal. We are just going back to the streets. Mapping perceptions through the senses of two different people. Different genders. Different backgrounds. Different religions. Different languages. Two characters walking alone in Berlin. Same route. Two ways. Day. Night. The rules were to experience the urban block, the urban park, and public transportation while recording it all.  _People  _Interactions  _Buildings  _Noises  _Smells  _Sights  Traveling across Berlin from Neuköllnto Charlottenburg and back was overall a nice...
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Side effects

By Project #2No Comments
Madlen Burton This project focuses on the side effects of the pandemic both in public and private space. After mapping my own side effects and how the places I was in effected how I felt. I created an instruction map for anyone else to map their own side effects. Even though this experience has been personal to each of us I believe that many of us have felt the same throughout the last year, however, sharing experiences and feelings sometimes still feels like a boundary. The map directs all the feelings we took upon us during the pandemic and symbolises...
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Developing an Embodied Practice with DisOrdinary Architecture

In the current pandemic, everyday normal lives have been shifted out of place; as what is conventionally public and private, inside and outside, visible and invisible, included and excluded has been re-mixed across assumed locations, spaces and encounters. This has produced an intense awareness, requiring the paying of new kinds of attentiveness to the simplest tasks, noticing dis/ordinary encounters with others, and with local built and natural spaces, and explicitly taking a position over issues of care and interconnectedness. The unpredictability and uncertainty of going to the shops or the park, or finding a place to have online meetings, requires creative skills in navigation and negotiation – an expertise many disabled people would say they already have just by living in that normal world.

What, then, can be learnt from lockdown? By precisely mapping and reflecting on these changed everyday practices, as they intersect with our already diverse bodyminds and particular situations, can we open up spaces for designing differently? Can we take the opportunity to work towards a new and better world? Can we imagine experimental and provocative spaces that liberate and value diverse bodyminds, rather than merely going back to perpetuating a world designed for normative bodies and relationships?

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Room O´clock Escaping repetitive Spaces

By project #1No Comments
Jeanne Astrup-Chauvaux, Oliver Gudzowski, Philipp Preiß In the past year, the contrasted feeling of having a fluid mind locked (down) in a static body, opened new horizons for dreams, highlighting their renewed importance in our daily lives, and even the possibility of their physical implementation in the spaces we know too well. Through this semi-fiction we decided to map personal strategies that we developed in the past months, and that helped us escape repetitive spatial and social situations. Through the use of fiction and physical  transformations of our surroundings, we explored dreamt spaces - which weren't that fictional in the...
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The Glass Enclosure

By project #1No Comments
Yarden Cohen and Roi Dwek The digital space that replaces the physical one The glass enclosure is an instrument of representation, allowing us to express emotions during times of social distance through the physicality of the digital medium We can Imagine how we re-populate space that were captured empty during the lockdown “filling in the missing blanks” re-inhabiting movement. Our daily routine has altered, The mirror-screen projects ourselves into each other spaces, arranged in columns and rows, minimizing overlapping, still not touching. How does social media embodies closeness when the latter is absent "Isolation and loneliness are not the same,...
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Tapes in Corona

By project #1No Comments
Paloma Xenia and a fellow student We feel that these spaces made of tape feel like a limit to us. Our daily life in Berlin is currently limited by Corona. But this barrier also helps protect others and us. An experience that we didn’t know and had never experienced before. Now we wear masks in the supermarkets, on the shopping streets, on the train. By keeping our distance, we can no longer see family and friends as we used to. We have to be flexible in a different way . We don´t meet all in one place like the university, but we meet us in a virtual space....
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Reading us Aloud Through Isolation

By project #1No Comments
Ivan Leroy In the short film Reading us Aloud Through Isolation, Ive tried to enlighten my growing connection to the humanoid objects populating my flat and the depth they give to my walls. While reading an extract of the book A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, I’m questioning the effect of words on my surrounding. In the film, you can briefly see me sitting at the kitchen table. But quickly the camera focuses on the divers objects, that I gathered along the years: George, an African mask, Bill, a trumpet playing statuette, a nameless drawing figure, a cast of my...
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A Fragmentation Of The Calendar

By project #1
Péter Máthé fem_arc · fem_arc STUDIO: Fragmentation Of The Calendar The pandemic is one of the biggest challenges our society had to deal with since I was born. At least in the sense that it is global, and only coordinated measures can fight it on the long term. To To shut down our economy, labour, transportation is one of them. Of course a lockdown is dangerous because certain social problems might under such circumstances intensify. Whilst for some this condition can even be enjoyable for a short period of time, for others it might be horrifying. In late 2020 human...
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Eye & Glove

By project #1
Richard Hees when it's windy outside my right eye always gets somewhat teary (it lies in the family) I'm carrying a chair with both hands that I have to put down every time, I need to wipe my right eye as I said it lies in the family my brother has it my father has it and my grandfather had it when there was some wind, especially in winter my granfather‘s eyes would tear a lot and he would use one of those old-school napkins to wipe his eyes dry he would always keep them in his pockets they look...
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Isolation

By project #1
Vicente Mateus, Şevval Öztürk, Nursena Yıldız fem_arc · fem_arc STUDIO: isolation Our intervention is based on light as a spatial concept. With it, comes the possibility to create a stage without boundaries, without definitions, without any classes and categories; a common ground. We took our intense relationship with isolation, how it affected our social life in a new city  and we brought this relationship to the streets, where anyone can experience it, together. After sharing our thoughts on the current situation of the world, we all agreed that we were dealing with isolation in a way we’ve never experienced before....
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Space Explorers

By warm up
with 22 i slipped my disk, now i live in two cities - this object helps me with both. yesterday i had to pick up my girl, so I couldn't go for a walk with my chair. at night i dreamed about my suitcase and realized that with him i recognize layers of the world wich i normally dont, because i dont have to - sound, stairs, texture of ground. my suitcase is made for a modern world, likes clean, flat grounds, lifts, places with the sound of civilization. i feel safe with him at the train station, on my...
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Heat Exchange

By project #1No Comments
Ana Rodriguez Bisbicus and Rahel Stange 6 degrees outside, it feels like 3 degrees.  the sun rises at 7.20 am. the sun sets at 4.20 pm.  today we have 9 hours of sun.  the later we start the day the less sun we will see.  the relation between light and temperature,  inside and outside,  afraid of cold, of darkness. I am nervous already. In 5 minutes it will start. Just a seminar. Just a group of people.  The digital world makes me feel unsecure, how does the background which will be seen by the group looks like?  I start to...
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PODCAST mit Diana Lucas Drogan

Diana-Lucas Drogan ist Mapping-Künstlerin und Architektin. In ihrem Atelier in Berlin sprechen wir über counter mapping und reflektieren über performative und ethnografische Methoden als Erweiterung des Repertoires, wie Räume gelesen, dargestellt und verändert werden können.

Learn more about DisOrdinary Architecture

Zoe Partington and Jos Boys from the DisOrdinary Architecture Project work with a network of disabled and deaf artists to develop models of new practice for the built environment, led by the creativity and experiences of those artists. In their regular meeting place in London we talk about how hard it is to challenge norms, who is enabled or disabled by existing spaces, and how their projects enable architecture students to explore built spaces beyond their usual perspective.

fem_arc STUDIO is a workshop series in which students challenge existing power structures in the built environment by learning new design tools.

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