Outposts on The New Death Strip
We would like to extend our belated thanks to Sandra Bartoli of Büro für Konstruktivismus and the Chair for Urban Design and Architecture at Berlin’s Technical University, for inviting myself and Oliver Miller to hold a lecture on The New Death Strip as part of a BA course investigating the line of the former Berlin Wall.
Our lecture, held in the Kunstfabrik on October 17th, was a great opportunity for us to revisit many of the themes which we brought to paper in our contribution to the ‘Disko’ series of publications back in 2010. It made sense to reshuffle a lot of that content into loose topics, and pinpoint these to various geographic locations. By doing this we could break down the story-structure of the publication, and not fall into the trap of recounting a travelogue in a linear fashion.
We also had a great time on November 15th when we were invited back as guest critics at the end of the course along with Christian Fuchs, Katharina Hagg, Daniela Mehlich and Matthias Heyden. Over the course of an exhausting afternoon where the students present their impressive project work, their was ample chance to delve into some heated exchange about the ramifications of speculative urban design concepts for this unique space.