Bauhaus Kolleg II

Serve City / Dot.City
13.08-14.08.2002
invitation LAb[au]

The Kolleg is a learning and design laboratory that includes the experience of living and working in the Bauhaus. The purpose the Bauhaus Kolleg is to experience, define, invent and design urban space in its all-round complexity and divergent details. In the Kolleg year 2002/2003 attention is focused on mobile communication media, the internet (ICT - Information and Communication Technology) and their interfaces in an urban context. Since the beginning of the 1990s these communication technologies and methods have experienced tremendous dynamic growth. Their increasing worldwide proliferation and interconnection has far-reaching consequences for almost all areas of life, but especially for the economy and urbanity. Whereas implications for an economy, which is becoming increasingly globalised, have long been studied and discussed, similar undertakings regarding the consequences for urban space are still in their infancy. In the past few years the discourse was above all dominated by ideals and fears. On the one hand mobile communication and the internet were seen as paving the way for the reactivation of lost urban values, and also for developing totally new forms of urban living.

On the other hand they were defined as instruments, which result in the final downfall of urban life. Beyond futurologist hypes and apocalyptic phobias, it is only recently that studies have been drawn up which make the complex changes for urban space a subject of discussion on an empirical basis. It is evident that there is an interweaving of "real worlds" and "virtual worlds" and that they change the materiality, infrastructure and societal, political and social fabric of cities. But how exactly do these changes take place? Is it true that existing forms of communication are becoming less important? Or is the opposite true and are they being upgraded? What shifts in the structure of urban spaces or

mobility does this cause? Does their transnational character in cities and peripheral locations create new forms of social, political and societal inclusion and exclusion? Is this connected with re-territorialisation trends in urban spaces? Or is the "old" city and with it urbanity, completely losing its position, and its importance, to virtual worlds? The spatial changes are particularly evident at the interfaces, which represent a way of selectively affecting urban space. In this respect the aim is on the one hand to analyse the changed character of places and events at interfaces in an urban context, and on the other hand to treat them as a new, hyper-complex creative task. The central question here is which forms of public life develop, disappear, move or become stronger in this new context and how do they change the structure and shape of urban spaces? Last but not least this poses an old question again: "How can architects, artists and scientists react adequately to this process of change in their occupational fields and how can they make this a basis for their planning, design and research work?"

*** text from the bauhaus www.site