What’s one major urban space that Berlin and Bangalore, Glasgow and Yogyakarta have in common? Vast stretches of disused wastelands within their city limits. The Wasteland Twinning project adopts the concept of city twinning -- or sister cities -- and applies it to urban wastelands. Comparing similar wasted sites in different cities side-by-side provokes ideas for cross-cultural communication concerning similar types of lots -- so we can better understand how these prevalent spaces function, and collaboratively design ways they could be used. Possible methods that Twinning Cities has come up with so far range from the practical (growing gardens on the lots) to the educational (comparative field recordings and photographs) to the archaeological (dredging wastewater to discover more about the sites' histories).
Between September 21-23, 2012, Wasteland Twinning will host a network forum at ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin. Free and open to the public, the forum will include workshops and laboratories featuring international participants, including Benjamin Brace (UK), Tore Dobberstein (Complizen, Germany), Sofia Donna (Greece), Stef and Romy Richter (Germany), Jan Van Duppen (Netherlands), and Skulpturenpark Berlin.
“Let’s get together/before we get much older,” sings Pete Townshend in the Who’s Teenage Wasteland. By proactively getting cities together sooner than later, useful public territories could arise from this neglected urban terrain.
Wasteland Twinning Network Forum
21-23 September, 2012
ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics
Siemensstrasse 27
10551 Berlin
