BERLIN MULTIPLICITIES

Project: Co-Drawing: New Formats for Collective Dialogue
Class: Summer Studio, California College of the Arts, Architecture Division
Date: Summer 2018
Instructors: Antje Steinmuller & Chris Falliers

Sept. 24-28 at 131 Hubbell Street, San Francisco
Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday, 12:00-5:00 PM
Reception: Thu Sep 27, 5:30 – 7:30 PM (free and open to the public)

This exhibition presents work from the Berlin Multiplicities summer studio where students directly engaged the influences, actors, and sites of public space production through research, on-site observation and direct participation. The resulting project–a public event titled Drawing Table(or Zeichentisch)– explores collaborative drawing as a format for engaging citizens in a conversation about contemporary urban space. The exhibition presents excerpts of the resulting Co-Drawing, a drawing that is both interface (multi-centered) and process (multi-authored), leveraging design expertise towards frameworks for collective dialogue.

Innovative public forms, whether works of architecture or art, staged temporary events, or the transformation of interior spaces, are the result of a productive synthesis of creative, professional, commercial, and political processes. As the nature of urban public spaces and forms has been changing considerably over the past two decades, so have the mechanisms for their formation and activation. The Berlin Multiplicities summer studio directly engaged the influences, actors, and sites of public space production through research, on-site observation and direct participation in an ongoing project at Hafenplatz –a large building complex from the 1970s– in collaboration with Raumlaborberlin, an experimental architecture practice renowned for its collaborative approach to transforming urban space.

The studio’s hypothesis that collective drawing with citizens can be a collaborative design tool as part of a process to co-produce public space was tested in the final studio project: a public event titled Drawing Table (or Zeichentisch) that offered two drawings as sites for capturing citizen input. The event took place outside of a former supermarket in the Hafenplatz complex, using its storefront as one location for the drawings. In the highly trafficked open space in front of the supermarket, a 30’ long table served as the location for the second drawing, for eating dinner, and for conversation. The resulting Co-Drawing is both interface (multi-centered) and process (multi-authored), leveraging design expertise towards frameworks for collective dialogue.

Credits: Sayer Al Sayer, Vishnu Balunsat, Chris Falliers, Jack Fanburg, Jane Gitschier, Fathmath Isha, Elena Lazaretnik, Chong Leng, Yang Li, Ji Qi, Nicholas Scribner, Jae Hyun Seo, Shubalakshmi Shekar, Antje Steinmuller, Jen Tai, Zhongwei Wang, and Charles Zhu with Christof Mayer and Eduardo da Conceição of Raumlaborberlin.