City Design

Michael Schindhelm has the interesting, very demanding but exciting job to help shaping the culture of the boom city of Dubai. The challenge is to find a cultural nucleus in a very new city, a "sudden city" and shape ways to canalize it into public cultural space. He works with the Culture Authority of Dubai and their approach is to build light and temporary buildings, moreover a universal museum and a big performing arts centre which will be designed by Zaha Hadid. On top, the big cities at the Persian gulf, Abu Dabi and Dubai, are so close, they will actually be growing together (read more about Schindhelms job in Dubai from DW) Wolfram Putz and Thomas Willemeit from GRAFT describe current challenges in human living: people moving into the cities, population growth, slum growth, infrastructure and show some examples how to react with temporary projects and a different approach to architecture seen in layers depending on the time dimension. Additionally Willemeit shows his vision of Berlin's big park, the Tiergarten. They imagined a game to be played in the park where players act as animals (deers, rhinos) trying to prevent other creatures to become stone. "This is maybe an unusual way for architects to understand what the environment is like they are working with", says Willemeit and he is certainly right. Still, years later they were approached by the Berlin senate who wanted a concept for the city's centre - then they could draw insights from the game to visualize dreams and visions for integrating the park into the city. Moderation: Michaela Neumeister (PdP) Graftlab Here is the full video from the city design panel at DLD09: