Critical Mass Mobil

KUNSTrePUBLIK in cooperation with Allianz threatened studio spaces in Berlin (AbBA)

The Critical Mass Mobil is a mobile piece of urban furnishing, built against the backdrop of the touristic spectacles of our cities. By adapting this urban phenomenon, an interesting sight is created for the neighbourhood: as a mobile, weatherproof platform, this contemporary Trojan Horse can hold up to 50 people in its inside. The bus can be used as projection surface and speaker installation for critical discourses and protest marches.

On September 17th 2017, Critical Mass Mobil visited five threatened places for local cultural production in Berlin, and facilitated a public performative discussion. This act of sightseeing was meant as a prelude to a workshop format geared at self-administered and common welfare-oriented studio spaces and cultural sites. The format is supposed to explore alternative support and financing models in consultation with relevant actors such as politicians, administrators, foundations, associations and initiatives.

Car to Sit

Car applications: urban furnishing according to the principle of swarm intelligence

KUNSTrePUBLIK in cooperation with Refunc

Based on the resource:
     CAR (appr. 1 million in Berlin)
           + PARKING (from Latin, parricus, ‘enclosure’)
                     + SPOT (appr. 10 million square meters marked areas in Berlin’s urban space)
= CAR PARKING SPOT

Car to Sit  expands the usage of parking spots (‘enclosures’) reserved for personal traffic within urban space in line with the double meaning of the parricus concept. As solid, resting, unused elements of urban furniture, parked cars are appropriated for active use in public space. Mass-produced, universal car applications temporarily generate new potentialities for activity and encounter in various locations.

The applications are created in such a way that not only the car owners but also each citizen can make use of their expanded functions. As the most simplistic prototypes, a foldable sitting module as well as a roof stage are presented here.

As an incentive for large-scale expansion, tax reductions as well as free parking spots in inner city areas (with little monoconform furnishing) would be required. Furthermore, the applications are a welcome added function for the future car sharing market.

Überbaus

Functional expansion of urban furniture to resolve shortage of space

Resource:
Berlin’s urban space contains public restrooms around 250 places in expensive, highly compressed inner city areas, in which there is a significant lack social and cultural infrastructure directed at common welfare.

Überbaus consists of a module-like, octagonal superstructure, in reference to the historical form of Berlin’s first public convenience - the so-called ‘Cafe Achteck’ (Cafe Octagon). The expandable pole structure with its foldable terraces creates an innovative model that provides affordable solutions for communal facilities in the city: sociocultural places, community centers, art and project spaces, studios, collective workshops or other forms of social infrastructure. As such, the spaces that arise allow for individual appropriation and broad participation, and new forms of potential solidarity economies with local identification and civil responsibility for public spaces.

With the building of a superstructure over public restrooms, the user benefits from the existing toilet with water supply. In addition, new synergetic care and maintenance concepts can be developed in the process. This generates an incentive for local projects with their own identity beyond global conformity: spaces of encounter of a new quality and quantity in line with a mixed, poly-active city.

Stage to Go

At the moment, there are over 1 million registered cars in Berlin. On average, a car is being moved for 15 minutes a day. Each car ordinarily takes up a space of 10 square meters.

Stage to Go uses the parking space to set up a mobile stage. It contains a lift system that collectively lifts up a compactly pressed car body, and by lowering the car produces energy for the light and audio installation of the stage itself, similar to an over-dimensional cuckoo clock with wind-up weights.

Stage to Go is a social generator. It is applicable to diverse locations in the city; the space of a parking spot suffices. For its usage, one can make common arrangements, or act spontaneously. The stage is freely accessible, and intended as an open space of exchange and performance. It fulfills the very own dedication of public space to the interaction, negotiation and (re)production of different political and cultural voices. As a replicable prototype, Stage to Go is a mobile stage for any form of everyday practice, explicitly as amplifier of the smallest local actors, whose lyricism tends to remain unheard in the cacophony of urban narration.

Vandalisator

A transformer of violence for public space

In our society, physical violence is ostracized and taboo. Aggressions are held back and often get away spontaneously. Vandalism in public space happens directional and non-directional.

In cooperation with the Technical University of Applied Sciences Wildau, the transformational power of physical efforts is calculated and potential prototypes are developed.