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Do It Yourself -
Internationale Bauausstellung
Berlin DIY-IBA City
A new paradigm of urban development is evolving in Berlin. The planned city is being complemented by a city of initiatives, a city where urban innovation is driven by a dynamic biosphere of artists, activists and entrepreneurs. Berliners are creating their city. More local participants are helping to shape this new paradigm now than ever before. They are testing new models for sustainable, socially integrated projects. The DIY-IBA is an open invitation to interested individuals and initiatives to refine and apply these models.
Berlin's DIY protagonists are no longer confined to small niches and temporary projects, they have begun working on an urban scale. Their strategies, evolved in difficult economic conditions, can be applied to Berlin's current challenges like the decaying monofunctional urban structures from the 60s and 70s, or Berlin's industrial and investment ruins.
During the IBA 84, Berlin pioneered 'Careful Urban Renewal', and established social and ecological standards for participatory urban development. It helped resolve a housing crisis by co-operating with the protest and preservation movement that had occupied condemned buildings in Kreuzberg. Conditions in Berlin have changed since then. Public resources have become scarce, but at the same time technology is expanding the ability of communities to act. The DIY-IBA will explore these new conditions, and will publicize and develop new models and methods to cultivate grass roots urban development.
As the financial crisis continues, more and more cities are learning from Berlin's self-organized urban development strategies. The DIY-IBA is the next step.
DO involve people: as many as possible, to explore the changing cultural and political landscape.
IT is your city: Berlin's Inhabitants, activists, artists and architects have made it the place for innovative DIY architecture and urban development.
YOURSELF to make it happen: local initiatives need support, both private and public.
INTERNATIONAL networks of initiatives and individuals focused on Berlin
BAU (Building) the DIY-IBA together.
AUSTELLUNG (this exhibition) will be built to further inspire Berliners and other cities to experiment with DIY urban development.
You are invited to help launch the DIY-IBA in Berlin. To take part, register your interest on this web site.
The first DIY-IBA meeting was held during the EXPERIMENTDAYS 12 on 17.09.2012.
Editorial Note: This page is a first step towards assembling protagonists from Berlin's diverse urban DIY landscape. The site aims to bring the many fragments of this landscape into focus, and is a work in progress. The selection is by no means complete.
Insist
Insist on influencing the city's mechanisms, to ensure that citizens have access to spatial, cultural, and infrastructural resources
Stadt Neudenken Is an initiative that fights for a realignment of Berlin Land sale policy and works on establishing an open table discussion on the topic.
Team11 connects people, who are experienced with iniative building processes and is offering a public discourse.
Haben und Brauchenseeks to advocate in the field of art as well as in art’s neighboring occupational fields a platform for discussion and action.
Berliner Wassertisch acts on the agenda of water as a common affair.
Bürgerinitiativen Netzwerk Berlin stands for the principles of a mixed and open city.
Megaspree is an action-group with the goal of protecting Berlin's endangered spaces against capitalisation by the real estate industry.
Prinzessinnen-garten is an urban gardening initiative near Moritzplatz that transformed wasteland into a social hub.
Mediaspree Versenken! is an initiative that supports the referendum "Spreeufer für Alle" and fights the sale of common ground.
Upstall Kreuzberg e.V. an initiative that supports sustainable city development in Kreuzberg especially in the so called Upstall-area
Welt-Bürger-Park e.V. is a union engaged in the preservation an completion of the Mauerpark as a whole.
Bäume am Landwehrkanal e.V. is a citizens initiative involved in the preservation of flora an fauna along the Landwehrkanal.
Berliner Kunsthalle e.V. is doing research and has initiated a public discours along the lack of a Kunsthalle in Berlin.
kotti und co is a tenants organisation at Kottbusser Tor that camps there as a form of ongoing protest.
Inform
Inform others to create a basis for action.
Gentrificationblog works on a scientific understanding of gentrification and informs about tenant activity
Mietenstopp is a blog that reports on issues concerning tenants and links local tenant initiatives
Slab: The heuristic journal for gonzo blurbanism.
Leerstandsmelder collects information about unused real-estate and creates transparency for new spatial options in the city.
Locally Grown City is a blog aims to inspire you to engage people with their city.
Architectuul is an open source platform that covers diverse architectural themes and people
ARCH+ is an architecture magazine that reports about current architectural activity
Bauwelt is a weekly architecture journal. The monthly issue Stadtbauwelt informs about architecture in relation to politics.
Self Made City collects and qualifies many samples of self-initiated appropriation of space and architectural production in Berlin. (Kristien Ring, 2013)
CoHousing Cultures is a handbook on self organised, sustainable community living. (id22, 2012)
Replaycity: IMProVisation analyses the technique of improvisation as an important resource in urban development. (Christopher Dell, 2011)
Die Stadt von morgen is a curatorial examination of the interbau in the Hansaviertel (Annette Maechtel, Kathrin Peters, Christine Heidemann)
Instant Urbanism traces Situationists in contemporary architecture and urban development (Francesca Ferguson, 2007)
Hier entsteht presents theories, practices and strategies of self organisation and participative architecture. (Matthias Heyden, Jesko Fezer, 2003)
Interpret
Interpret ideas and initiatives, uniting them is the first step towards transforming knowledge into practice.
Akademie c/o explores the context of theoretical models of city and architecture as a basis of social interaction.
id22 is a civil non-profit organisation that advocates a culture of sustainable urban development.
Akademie einer neuen Gropiusstadt is a lab for cooperative research that develops new methods for the handling of large-scale mono functional housing developments.
Doppeltes Berlin explores the reciprocal relationship between architecture and political ideology using Berlin as an example.
GentriMap is an open-data Web-applet for gentrification to visualise the evolution in Berlin on a city wide level.
Kristien Ring is an architectural curator and founder of AA Projects.
Ilka und Andreas Ruby are architecture critics and curators that run the publisher Ruby Press.
Francesca Ferguson is an architectural curator and initiator of Urbandrift
Nikolai von Rosen is an artist, architecture lecturer and curator.
Christian Burkhardt is a business economist and architecture-theorist. He is one of the initiators of Architectuul.
Daniela Brahm und Les Schliesser are artists and initiators of ExRotaprint.
Friedrich von Borries is an architecture-theorist and curator. He works as part of an interdisciplinary team on topics of sustainable city growth.
Matthias Böttger is curator at the DAZ and founder of Raumtaktik, office from a better future.
Carson Chan is architecture critic and curator
Florian Heilmeyer is architecture critic and co-author of the catalogue of the German contribution to the Venice Biennale.
Interlink
Interlink individuals to operate at the scale of the city.
Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und -initiativen is a loose association that works on establishing long-term reliable structures for project spaces..
Netzwerk Berliner Baugruppen Architekten concentrate and communicate the expertise necessary for the success of the Model Building cooperative.
urbandrift
Experimentdays is an annual seminar week on participation and the self-organised city.
Deutsches Architektur Zentrum is an initiative by the BDA that addresses all themes in architecture and urban development.
Haus der Kulturen der Welt is a cosmopolitan place for contemporary art and their discussions.
Neuer Berliner Kulturverein n.b.k. is a place of contemporary art and discourse production focussed on city themes.
AEDES is an architectural forum that implements exhibitions and provides a campus for architecture and city research.
Kunstwerke Berlin
KUNSTrePUBLIK is an association for the realisation of art projects that runs the sculpture park in Berlin and has initiated the Centre for Art and Urbanism.
Plattform Nachwuchsarchitekten is an informal Network on topics of the city and its architecture.
raumlaborberlin realises and test city models as temporary interventions according to the principal of participation.
Ideenaufruf Zukunft Ostkreuz
Integrate
Integrate multiple forces and fragments into innovative projects.
Bremer Höhe eV is a cooperative of about 600 apartments that evolved from a tenants organisation.
Genossenschaft Autofrei Wohnen Berlin eG
Luisenstadt eG
Mietshäuser Syndikat advises self-organised projects and engages in Projects to take them off the real-estate market
Selbstbau eG was founded in 1990 and now encompasses 21 houseprojects, of which 3 are new.
Studentendorf Schlachtensee eG was threatened with demolition in 1990. It was saved through initiative and was converted into a cooperative.
Die Zusammenarbeiter is an open network of experts on self-initiated project development.
GLS Bank is a social-ecological Bank that helped finance many self-initiated projects.
Stiftung Edith Maryon buys real-estate to place at the disposal of long-term socially aligned living and work projects.
Stiftung Triassponsors initiatives associated with sustainable land-usage, ecological construction and new forms of living
Stiftung Abendrot is a pension fund that invests in sustainable projects.