Spaces of Uncertainty

Public space in its traditional interpretations � its social and political ideals � is unable to follow the heartbeat of today's rapidly changing city. Instead of adding force to an ongoing rhetorical discourse of loss, this book proposes to resist a misleading nostalgia of homecoming by accepting the fragmentary nature of the public. It draws attention to the possibility of a more open concept of public space, acknowledging the existence of places beyond traditional definition.
Berlin as an urban landscape opens an unexpectedly contemporary view upon this agitated debate on public space. Burdened with the weight of history and in constant search for its identity, there is no other city than Berlin manifesting the instabilities of ideology in such a dramatic way. Berlin's everyday environment, torn by 20th century's ideological superimpositions and waves of destruction, is left with enormous amounts of infill and fallow land. Beside the potentials of redevelopment strategies trying to bridge the architectural gaps, the city's vacant plots offer the possibility of an immediate kinetic energy that celebrates the missing. Berlin is a vacant city in which residual space and public space lose their definitions.

Kenny Cupers | Markus Miessen

21 cm x 16 cm
Softcover
englisch, 191 Seiten, zahlr. Abb.

23,00 EURO

ISBN 10: 3-928766-54-6
ISBN 13: 978-3-928766-54-8