Berlinaside (Kenny Cupers, Markus Miessen) Spaces of Uncertainty – Orte der Unsicherheit http://www.spacesofuncertainty.org www.framework-berlin.de

participants

"Berlin is not a harmous grewn city, but a porous landscape, breathing out silence."

The margin offers a second perspective to this specific nature of the architectural production. In opposition to architecture, the space of the margin allows for a more direct idea of process, a continual one. The physical remains are a ground of ephemeral traces, and offers simultaneity of difference, stratified information that spaces of architectural development are lacking in their exclusivity. In this respect, the margin functions as the delayed catalyst of urban culture. This extra dimension to architecture’s instrumentality enables us to understand the margin as a local recollection of the other, a memorial testimony of tactical space. Occupied by whispering narratives rather than visual representation, this continuity in space and time is the enormous resource that marginal territories present today as the ultimate buffer zone in the contemporary city.

The three partite video-installation shows a visual research on Berlin (space), Brussels (time) and London (energy). It shows Berlin as a vacant city, where spontaneous activities occur in the free spaces of the urban landscape that serve as catalysts for experimentation. Brussels will be shown in its temporal appearance of marginalized activities, to be found in the city’s dynamic everyday texture at specific times. In London, where the existence of spontaneity is challenged by the density and spatial-economic pressure of a complex urban field, overlapping uses and a diversity of users will show how collective energies rule its appearance.

Biography

Berlinaside is a joint project by Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen. They have produced the publication – Berlinaside - Spaces of Uncertainty“ - which addresses the importance of spontaneous activities in the urban landscape with Berlin as a case study. They are currently working on a series of exhibitions throughout Europe with an emphasis on the urban margin.

Kenny Cupers (1978) is a Belgian architect who has worked at Studio Daniel Libeskind in Berlin. His main interests are situated in the intersection of urban space and socio-cultural change, on which he writes on a freelance basis. He is particularly captivated by the questions of resistance and innovation in today‘s globalised territories.

Markus Miessen (1978) received his Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Glasgow School of Art, after which he worked at Studio Daniel Libeskind in Berlin. He is currently studying at the Architectural Association (London) and writes freelance on issues of public space and urban phenomenology, with contributions to magazines such as Blueprint, Polis and Build..

Investigating forces that influence, generate and control the city, he is interested in the significance of political, economic and social mechanisms of change which challenge the large-scale formal move as the only option of modification to the urban fabric.