Message from the Exhibitor

Water Works – in the Flow of Making

At a place called "Bay of Rummelsburg” of the river Spree close to the Berlin city center, around 150 people, who can no longer afford to pay the rent, live on old rusty barges and DIY houseboats. Living on a boat has a tradition in many places. Here in Berlin there is no law that requires technical checkup for water vehicles and anchoring in the bay is boat-parking-fee free. The only rule is that one person always has to stay to secure the boat. To go out and move around freely they towed the boats together as clusters, so just one person is required to be on each floating island. Isn’t this a brilliant idea? Especially for overcrowded cities, with hyperventilating housing markets and delirious regulations protecting landowners, not tenants! On this rare occasion of a frozen river, the people living in the expensive new apartment blocks around the bay and the squatters of the liquid public space start to mingle: middle class kids and parents skating in the sun between the boathouses, boat families going shopping with a wheelbarrow across the ice. What a wonderful sight! While we spun our pirouettes around these charmingly frozen though partly precarious lifeforms, we thought we should bring ideas like this to Japan.

In Japan, a spectacular urban plan for the development of Tokyo caused a sensation 66 years ago. Kenzo Tange commented his "Plan for Tokyo 1960": On the intricate levels of artificial ground it would be possible to build a city free from restraints imposed by land and to produce new space values as well as new hopes (Shinkenchiku, March, 1961). It proclaimed that many of the megacity’s problems could be solved with a small shift of perspective. No more chaos and unbridled sprawl, no untamed land consumption by the modification of the very nature of the city. The simple shift of perspective was viewing the bay as part of the city. Despite all criticism we can have about his partly dystopian vision today, we have to respect Tange for his plea and struggle for the imagination of a better city for everyone.

We resume the discussion around the urban leap into the water and transforming the city into an open dynamic harbour. As a first step we row into the Tokyo bay to explore the potentials of urban life on water with a group of SIT students. With our architecture of active urban praxis we invite everyone to never stop rethinking. At the gallery will present this joint adventure along with some of our previous water related works in an active space for learning and unlearning.

Water Works is an exhibition enjoyable for people of all age groups. Kids, bring your parents!