DEMO:POLIS architecture symposium
Tu 6.10 and We. 7.10.2015
at Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin
DEMO:POLIS is the exhibition focus at the Akademie der Künste in spring 2016, and deals with the development of cities and their public spaces. A workshop in collaboration with the Technical University of Berlin, the Berlin University of Arts, the Weißensee School of Art, and the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences will kick off preparations and discussions of central aspects of the exhibition.
Cities today are engaged in an asymmetrical competition.
While small and mid sized cities increasingly suffer from this development, first losing people, then also infrastructure and civic life in a downward spiral, metropolises are experiencing an unprecedented hype and with it, great pressure on their houSing markets and public spaces. Taking an international perspective on the issue, it becomes quite clear that public space, as the space where politics are negotiated, constitutes the fundamental prerequisite for democratic cooperation. When cities are no longer able to produce or protect public space, then what is endangered is not only a place, but also the very idea of the public in society. It is therefore necessary to demand a right to public space.
A symposium on 6 and 7 October 2015 will pointedly deal with this problematic, using three German cities and three internation- al metropolises as case studies.