Students: ______________
Across natural, agrarian and urban landscapes, soils form thin, fragile and dynamic horizons at the interface of the geo-, bio- and atmospheres, embodying the multilayered, planned and un- planned, development of space throughout time, and performing various socio-ecological functions that are crucial for the future resilience of inhabited territories.Using mixed methods relating to archival exploration, ecological field survey, literature review, and policy analysis, the objective of the Bachelor and Master seminar is to research a series of char- acteristic historical and contemporary Berlin urban soils and speculate in alternative futures.
Students will be invited to conduct individually and collectively multiscalar investigations, ranging from in situ observations and drawing of explorative sections, to the analysis of larger territorial systems through critical mapping.
Such repertoire of soil portraits or soil narratives aims at offering an original perspective on Berlin ́s development throughout the various periods of its urban and environmental history, and the multiple dimensions of its unique contemporary landscape.
To understand the evolving relationship that urban soils maintain with specific build or unbuild morphologies and ecologies, the seminar will trace in particular the formal and conceptual lineage of two intricated genealogies of “projects for the ground” (Secchi, 1986) that constitute Berlin ́s urban palimpsest: on the one hand, the successions of classical, modernist and postmodern urban- istic plans and projects; on the other hand, the spontaneous ur- ban wilderness emerging from the unplanned processes of ruins, brachen and laisser-faire.