Frankfurt am Main is planning to erect a new district, the European
quarter, around an urban entertainment center for shopping, entertainment and popular culture on disused railway sidings and a site not far from the trade fair exhibition center. This project is one of the many examples of urban redevelopment engineered by an alliance of private investors, transnational companies and commercial architectural interests. The ensuing transfer of the center to a homogenized commercialized and controlled event world is the subject of much discussion. The flashy shop window of a standardized urban future clearly reflects a loss of urbanity.The interdisciplinary and international Bauhaus Kolleg group will devise a model for an urban center in the European quarter in Frankfurt as part of an architectural blueprint. It will be based on an understanding of the urban event world as an urban
spatial node, as a flexible structure providing a fusion of local and global space, commercialized cultural events and everyday cultural practices.
The second trimester is subdivided in an 'exercise' phase and a 'design' phase. The goal of the exercises is the extension of the traditional tools and concepts for analysis and design strategies for architecture. This methodological and didactical approach towards an extended perception takes the changing role of architecture in the event city into account: the traditional typological and infrastructure analysis informs only insufficiently the production of architecture.
The traditional combination and duties of program have to be challenged in the same way organizational principles have to be investigated.
Program, the generative element in architecture, has been explored in various combination, yet event cities incorporate ephemeral, disappearing program. Organizational structures in architecture and urbanism should assimilate the network structure of our society, developing from a traditional, static urban system to a more dynamic, participatory urban model.
Context, as a traditional parameter in architecture and urbanism, has gained a broader meaning. Every city can only be seen and understood in a relation to the global and local context. The impact of context onto any project within a city needs to address these two extremes of the global and the local, finding a balance between them, optimized for the particular situation.
Experience and atmosphere, the underestimated forces in urbanism and architecture, get a central position in the event city. How can a city provide diversity in experiences and atmospheresNULL How can we generate and control experience and atmosphereNULL Which innovative elements, beyond form and material, can create and support experience and atmosphereNULL
The 'design' phase of the trimester will incorporate the explored possibilities in an interdisciplinary urban/architectural design project for Frankfurt, an Event city.
Applications are being accepted until 7. January 2001
PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS:
ACADEMIC DEGREE and/or SEVERAL YEARS' PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE
in the following disciplines; architecture, art, urban and/or landscape planning, design, the social sciences or humanities, documented in a curriculum vitae.
PORTFOLIO
STATEMENT OF INTEREST
PROOF OF PROFICIENCY IN ENGLISH
KNOWLEDGE OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
BASIC SKILLS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BASIC SKILLS IN USING NEW MEDIA
A selection committee chooses a maximum of 25 international participants.
TUITION FEES are 3000 DM per trimester. Not included are housing costs, living expenses, travel costs or study materials.
Possibilities of privately financed scholarships are constantly examined.
HOUSING ARRANGEMENTS
Both the studio wing of the historic Bauhaus building and the dormitory located ca. 4 km away offer accommodation at very reasonable rates.
For further information and reservation please contact the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.
The participants will have access to all facilities at the Bauhaus, including the library, archive, and media lab. Studio room equipped with work space and computer access will be provided.
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