HS 2018 SEMINAR WEEK
B E R L I N
ACTIVE LABORATORY OF HOUSING QUALITY
Berlin incorporates a rich variety of projects which are until today innovative showcases
for good housing quality. They don’t lose actuality nor their importance. Facing the
Stalinallee, the Hansa-Viertel development demonstrated during Cold War the new modern
life with participation of internationally renowned architects as Alvar Aalto, Oscar Niemeyer,
Walter Gropius and others. The 600 metres long highway overbuilding Schlangenbaderstrasse
deals in the 70’s with the housing densification and newly built infrastructures. About 15 years later,
Frei Otto experimented in a participatory process the auto-planification and improvisation of his
Ökohaus. Wide-spread practice of Baugruppen shape nowadays the geography of collective housing
in Berlin. And still, the urban block Prenzlauer Berg fascinates with its well-performed density.
This seminar week is a unique opportunity to question the current qualities of housing, which
need to be continuously reinvented, on the basis of audacious and generous experiments that
this city accepted to build as a laboratory for living. It still remains surprisingly modern, and a
source of thinking that we will try to analyze together, to integrate their qualities into future projects.
Monday, October 22, 2018 – Friday, October 26, 2018