The rain
Never falls upwards.
When the wound
Stops hurting
What hurts is
The scar

Bertolt Brecht, from Poems Belonging to a Reader for Those who Live in Cities

During my second stay in Chongqing I took part in a Sino-German workshop about „The future of neighbourhoods and urban public space“. It started on its first day with a series of lectures, that was moderated by Prof. Chu Dongzhu (Chongqing University) and Wilfried Eckstein (Goethe Institut Shanghai).

from: http://news.zhulong.com/read146770.htm

Jens Kump from German architects HPP presented the company’s masterplan for the new high-speed-rail station in Chongqing, that won the first prize in the official competition. HPP has previous experience with rail stations, since they also did the re-design of the historical main station in Leipzig city centre, which was partly transformed into a retail space. For Chongqing they proposed a traffic hub within a multipurpose area, integrating retail and office spaces as well as residential living and leisure.

from: http://www.hpp.com/en/projekte/typologies/master-planning/chongqing.html

German architect Falk Kagelmacher, who worked seven years for the Ministry of Housing and Rural-Urban Development PRC, spoke about his experiences with community involvement in China and a recent self-experiment as resident in one of Beijing’s traditional neighbourhoods. Prof. Jörg Leeser from the Peter Behrens School of Architecture in Düsseldorf gave some examples of participatory projects at the crossroads of architecture, sustainability and public space, that engage and adress creative and cost-conscious citizens with a DIY-attitude.

The home as construction kit: "Grundbau und Siedler" by BeL, from: http://frieze-magazin.de/archiv/kolumnen/aus-alt-mach-neu/?lang=en

Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz, the artistic director of the Kunsthaus Dresden, presented various public art projects in Germany that she was involved with as a curator, covering architectural art, participatory art, sculpture as well as performance art. She didn’t forget to mention the problems and resistances that often occur during the realization and implementation of projects in public space, ranging from harsh media criticsm to rigid systems of rules and magisterial resistance. I spoke shortly about the Greek tragedy as a very old European public art form dealing with the question of the social, before I presented some of my installative artworks that either happened in public space or that dealt with public space.

From the Chongqing-based team, Prof. Huang Tianqi gave some insights into the historical and contemporary structure and administration of the Chinese neighbourhoods, to which Prof. Long Hao added further observations and thoughts. Prof. Xia Hui talked about the status of renovation for the three selected neighbourhoods, and explained the aims and methods of the whole project in more detail. Prof. Zhao Qiang showed a slideshow of photographs that he had taken in the old neighbourhood of Ciqikou in combination with some melodramatic music, and emphasized in his lecture the importance of the happiness of the residents. A quite entertaining lecture with the title „The vulnerable city“ was given by Prof. Wei Haoyan: Almost without further comments he listed some of the „architectural highlights“ of the city, such as new stone buildings whose facades had been painted in the style of historical half-timbered houses, empty apartment blocks, a immense highway bridge that just stops near the old town of Ciqikou or residential villas and a leisure complex done in fake European architectural styles. He finished his presentation with the question, how the identity of a city is constructed and what could be the identity of a city such as Chongqing.

Unfinished Elevated Highway, Ciqikou, Shapingba District, Chongqing, © 2011 Sze Tsung Leong, from: moma.org

In the final discussion, there was a general agreement, that the identity of a city is / should be always produced by its inhabitants. What would be a city without the people living in it? Summing up so far, all the presented research and concepts regarding the three neighbourhoods in Chongqing had a very specific focus on the inhabitants, and the German presentations dealt quite extensively with community involvement and participatory practices. Quite a few people in the audience seemed to be surprised, that „experts from a country“, that still seems to be mainly associated with perfection and technological advancement, were obviously in favour of kind of provisional, non-perfect strategies, that put a strong focus on participation, peoples own initiative and creativity. A city is in a permanent flux and development process, and with the city are also the people and their spaces in a constant transformation. Space has to be flexible, so that it can adapt to its inhabitants and be accepted and lived by them.

The German urbanist Jürgen Hasse describes in his book „Die Wunden der Stadt – Für eine neue Ästhetik der Städte“ / “The wounds of the city – Towards a new aesthetics for cities” the wounds of a city, f.e. ruins or fallow land, as „symbols with a contemplative language“: He writes that these “wounds in the city” would often be perceived as a kind of „Leerstelle“ (empty gap), that would not easily fit within the social order. But in the between of a „no longer“ and a „not yet“ they would generate a temporary perplexity, that stimulates phantasy and reflection: In such a way new spaces, where humans and nature win the possibility to develop, are enfolded. Therefore a city could only be inhabitated consciously, if its specific atmosphere is perceived in its wounds:

What’s old collapses, times change, And new life blossoms in the ruins.

Friedrich Schiller