As part of the accompanying fringe programme to the exhibition Konstantin Grcic - Panorama, the Vitra Design Museum is hosting a talk on Thursday April 17th by Berlin creative collective Raumlabor.
Established in 1999 as a loose association of architects and artists Raumlabor have spent the past fifteen years exploring issues around urban renewal, interactive environments, the borders between public and private spaces. Cityscapes, to use the vocabulary of Panorama.
For their Vitra Design Museum talk members of the Raumlabor team will discuss their vision of the "city of tomorrow" in context of the collective's past and current projects, including - we would assume - the Eichbaumoper, which transformed the Eichbaum metro station in Mülheim into an open air opera house; the 2009 Spacebuster intervention in which they "re-planned" various locations across New York with a vast, mobile, inflatable, temporary space; or the "World is not Fair" mini World's Fair they staged at Berlin Tempelhof in 2012.
And while we can appreciate that for many of you such projects may sound like messing about rather than getting some proper work done; one of Raumlabor's first projects in 1999 involved a re-imagination of Moritzplatz in Berlin, including an urban forest. The Prinzessinnengarten community allotments that now stand on the site might be a very, very small-scale forest, but is not only one of the more interesting and important urban intervention projects in Berlin, but a project that shows alternative urban futures are feasible if communities seize the initiative. Just as Raumlabor sought to demonstrate in 1999. And will no doubt seek to do at the Vitra Design Museum.
Raumlabor – Temporary Architecture takes place at the Vitra Design Museum, Charles-Eames-Strasse 2, 79576 Weil am Rhein, Germany on Thursday April 17th 2014. The talk will be held in German, and entry is free.
