MakeCity 2018 – The Festival For Architecture And Urban Alternatives: The Second Chapter In Berlin

Berlin will set the stage for the second international Festival for Architecture and Urban Alterna-tives in 2018. The 17 day programme takes place throughout the city from 14th June – 1st July. Over 120 exhibitions, workshops, Make City Open curated tours and Studio Talks are being de-veloped together with numerous partners and co-designers.
MakeCity’s international programme is devised in and out of the current climate in Berlin. The framework of this contemporary city and the rapid changes underway here on every level ¬– gov-ernmental, civic, spatial and architectural – sets the stage for a resolutely trans-sectoral and trans-disciplinary approach.

Berlin Remixing is both an ideal and a goal – to build bridges in the urban discourse between often starkly polarised positions. To encourage critical debate and new perspectives. To offer alternatives to the top-down vs. bottom up discourse on city making. Throughout Europe, the financial crisis has led to a fundamental and long-term rethink on the civic economy. Austerity economics have led to drastically cutbacks in social and public services. This has increasingly called forth a far greater level of civic engagement – and with it alternative economic models for regeneration in cities. MakeCity intends to reflect new coalitions between civic movements, municipalities, urban planners and pro-gressive developers that are paving the way for the reactivation of a social contract for urban change. The festival features new architecture and new typologies and design processes that reflect such paradigm shifts.

Berlin’s cross-party coalition has enshrined a clear social agenda in its political contract that in-cludes far-reaching targets for new social housing, mixed use and the reactivation of ground floor spaces. The city is growing by 40 000 inhabitants a year. The coalition contract aims to contribute to social, cultural interaction and local urban production. Municipalities are reacting to rampant prop-erty speculation in the city by buying back properties and safeguarding them. Major publicly owned sites are to be developed in future together with civic initiatives.
This is the backdrop for the international exchange during Berlin Remixing. We will look at innova-tive design strategies for cultural diversity in cities, affordable housing and mixed-use develop-ments; in short, innovative ways of keeping urban production within the central city fabric – all of which seek to enrich local urban districts.

The European network activated for the MakeCity programme should innovate and inspire change within the world of both state-driven, citizen-led, and private urban development.

The festival is being shaped by way of workshops with partners and co-designers of the pro-gramme. MakeCity will be built around three core themes: Rethinking Structures / Processes for circular systems and urban design. The circular economy begins in cities, and the featured projects will show how we can tackle the over-consumption of resources by creating regenerative cycles in urban systems and our material economies. Urban / Nature: the interweaving of the urban and the natural environment. We will build upon the discourse on urban commons and urban landscapes
that fuelled MakeCity in 2015. Projects will feature micro-communities and civic initiatives that have evolved from a deeper understanding of our green infrastructures. Architecture / Space: in-novative programmes and projects that remix user models and materials. Berlin Remixing will re-flect the ways in which paradigm shifts in society’s values are reflected in the built spaces of cities; in new typologies, adaptable architecture, and ground-breaking strategies of reuse.

MakeCity is supported in 2018 by the German Lottery Foundation and the Berlin Senate. Numerous Patrons and founding partners contribute financially to the festival. The Senator for Urban Devel-opment and Housing, Katrin Lompscher anticipates that “with its trans-disciplinary dialogues and debates, MakeCity offers initiatives, citizens, political, cultural and economic protagonists and mu-nicipalities the opportunity to engage and inspire one another – and to improve their networks in the interests of forward-thinking and constructive urban development.” The Chamber of Architects is a major partner, and MakeCity frames the Day of Architecture in Berlin. According to Sebastian Beck, project curator for the VHW, the Federal Association for Urban Development: “Urban Devel-opment is increasingly about governance, involving engaged civic urban developers: a galvanised civic society. MakeCity is a Platform with which to advance the debate on the contours of contem-porary urban governance.”

The MakeCity festival will feature four main formats: The Festival Centre (at the Czech cultural centre in Berlin Mitte) will consolidate the international discourse around the core themes over 9 of the 17 festival days. Urban Hubs are larger-scale cultural and architectural sites featuring their own curated exhibitions and events. Make City Open will feature curated tours, walking debates and Open House visits to new built projects throughout Berlin. Studio Talks, devised by the participat-ing architecture and urban design practices, will give insight into working methods and strategies.

MakeCity 2018 is also conceived together with a curatorial advisory board made up of experts in new materials, wood-built urban architecture, open workshops and mixed use, participation, urban food production and the circular economy.

For further information please see the website www.makecity.berlin
For press inquiries contact Press@make-shift.info
Phone: +49 (0) 163 25 39 269

The core festival organisation of MakeCity is an independent non-profit limited company, supported by founding partners, commercial sponsors and architectural associations at local and federal level. MAKE_SHIFT gGmbH is responsible for the festival management, conceptual development with partners, the communication strategy, the allocation of funding, the acquisition of partners and sponsors, the coordination and visualization of all associated events.

Make_Shift gGmbH
Francesca Ferguson
Oderberger Straße 9
10435 Berlin
Tel.: + 49 (0)30 5300057 92
press@make-shift.info

This release was published on openPR.