Into Die Gärtnerei

 

– Det handla om å lære av elevane, seier forelesaren ved BAS, som er i bergen og fortel om prosjektet Der Gärtnerei. Der dyrkar dei jorda, utdannar Tysklands nye lansdmenn og utforskar grensene mellom offentleg rom og kunstprosjekt, arkitektur og aktivisme.

I am myself in BAS to teach when I, by coincidence, walk into this talk by the guest lecturer Christof Mayer. He asks: Who learns from whom? Mayer talks about his expericence from teaching in Berlin. And I relate to his question. I have asked myself the same this week; doing a writing workshop for master-students at the Academy of Architecture in Berlin. It has been an ongoing experience of exchange. Not a one-way lecture from professor Thomas Wiesner and myself. 

Die Gärtnerei, the Mayer says, is a experimental way of looking on teaching; half greenhouse and planting lot, half educational room, all founded on a former semetary a stone’s throw from the old Tempelhof airpport.

How does this differ from the average Berlin urban gardenning or social interventionist architecture/ arthappenings?

Proposal for an answer: Mayer & co explore the polylemmas and not dilemmas of urban development. 

Then a comment, laconic and whispered from a person in the audience: Just how many urban gardenning projects vs. alternative architecture are there space for in Berlin?

Proposal for an answer: When considering that berliners grow their vegetables in coffecups, bicycle-baskets, WC-waterbasins and their jacket pockets; I guess there are endless spaces.