dörfer-großstadt

Dörfer-Groβstad argues for a fundamental conceptual shift in the way we organise our urban systems, and for thinking and acting beyond what is considered ‘sustainable’ development. Urban dwellers need to find ways of escaping what is increasingly felt like a virtual and frontal attack on their well-being without escaping urban matter. Large modern conurbations have effectively tried to declare their independence from nature. People tend to see cities as centres of the universe rather than as appendages of ecosystems and climate systems.

Dörfer-Groβstad, is an ebook discussing the merits of several tactical planning concepts aiming at establishing a healthier relationship between Natur and Kultur. The theory does not rule out radical thinking and in fact sponsors a new attitude towards urban matter based on little talked about modus operandi like demolition, recycling, multi-scaling and urban hacking. The book is a collection of memos, essays, interviews, videos, photo galleries, interactive graphics, reports, data sets, and, even, personal journals – all produced over the last five years. The variety of documents and modes of writing reflects the multifaceted reality of urbanity today as well as the urgency of approaching its complexity from a variety of angles.

The author of Dörfer-Groβstad, conrad-bercah, is an architect, architectural/urban thinker and the founding director of c-b-a, content for bare architecture, a Berlin-based architectural practice focused on defining a contemporary a-b-c in architecture, expressing the bare life of architectural form stripped of the prevailing rhetoric of the day.