Off-campus UMass Amherst users: If this thesis is NOT open access, please use the following link to log into our proxy server and download this thesis.

Capturing Gathering Swarming - Re-coding Post-Communist Space in East Germany

Tobias Bernecker, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

Document Type: Open Access

Degree Program

Architecture

Degree Type

Master of Architecture (M.Arch.)

Year Degree Awarded

2009

Month Degree Awarded

May

Primary Subject Category

Architecture

Secondary Subject Category

History; Sculpture

Keywords

architecture, impermanence, east germany, post-socialist

Advisor(s) or Committee Chair

Luarasi, Skender
Gilpin, Heidi

 

Abstract

My project is an acknowledgement of the fact that the physical layout of our environments is not directly describing and shaping the way we live or our societies are shaped. Non-spatial structures are playing a bigger role in societal processes than spatial ones. My project is trying to give these invisible processes spatial expression. Non-functional structures that highlight the non-functionality of postsocialist space. The monotony and monumentality of socialist spaces is contrasted with a design that expresses the multiplicity (of possibilities, paths, choices, desires) that exists nowadays. Orthogonal space is sliced up, perforated and at points overlaid without replacing it in it’s totality.

‘Non-functional’ elements are formal expressions of the realm of virtual space which permeates our lives and cities as well. These elements function in a more ‘internet’ fashion (multi layered, multi directional, yet clustered, streamlined etc) and yet they perform in the real world. Yet in the same time they are expressing our high-tech society without being hightech.

Simultaneously, the presence of these structures addresses the condition of impermanence and change that play a strong role in the psyche of East Germans today. The multiplicity which is expressed by the project contrasts the rigidity of socialist architecture and society - and creates a link to remembering the past.

Discipline(s)

Architecture

Recommended Citation

Bernecker, Tobias, "Capturing Gathering Swarming - Re-coding Post-Communist Space in East Germany" (2009). Masters Theses. Paper 305.
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/305