Paradise Engineering: Resurge

Resurge: Latin, to rise again, awake again

In Berlin, many industrial buildings with viable structures are scheduled for demolition. These buildings and the need to build 137,000 new homes by 2025 often conflict with one another.

The plot is located in Berlin Kreuzberg on the border to Friedrichshain and Mitte, Köpenicker Strasse, right at Spree. While the area is in the hands of its own city company, it is now caught in the conflict between investor-oriented privatisation, resisting citizens, activists, and reactionary politics. Today still over a hundred people work here. It’s noisy, it’s dirty, and it is not accessible to the public, while a green city in its figure stretches in that direction. A living relict of the primary industrial use of the riverfront zones in Berlin.

The current buildings and use threatens to disappear because living space is to be created here. But in our proposal, we aimed to keep the activities as far as possible, keep the resources already there, but also introduce housing as the future development of the plot.

To make that possible, the superposition was a clear answer. According to our thesis, spaces for production, storage and waste processing must be kept in the city. Not only to keep distances small and thus be more climate-friendly but also to remain visible, to make connections recognisable and to be ready in times when such rooms can be sorely needed.

We started with the quality of one unit to create a city. Tables to build on and bridges to live on. The relation to the sky. The clear axis, the visual contact. Windows formed between houses—courtyards with no walls. One might walk under bridges, over bridges over water, plants, and trucks. One could have a garden at 12,5 meters above the ground, a second ground, with neighbours passing along above. While everything below has been largely preserved and reorganised we have also left room for expansion here. Everyone has a right to the city; it should nourish us all and serve as a resource for our basic needs when moving around the town.

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