Studio 12
Unliveable Berlin
Michael Roper
Studio Description
Berlin is riddled with the scars of its history, having undergone several periods of trauma and transformation. This is a city still coming to terms with its physical and cultural territories. Unliveable Berlin will take a group of masters students from architecture, landscape and urban design to the ANCB Metropolitan Laboratory in Berlin where they will develop ideas for experimental housing. Berlin is the heartland of Baugruppen, a model for housing that empowers ordinary citizens to design and finance their own apartment buildings. In Melbourne, the Nightingale movement is a revolution in housing inspired by Baugruppen. Students will have the opportunity to study and visit the Baugruppen projects, along with Berlin’s other experimental housing movements from the 1950s (Hansaviertel) and 1980s (IBA).
Studio Outcomes
GLOBAL THINKERS Stripped of well-worn reference points, the travelling studio encourages students to see with fresh eyes. They come to sense a city’s unconscious – its undercurrents – developing instincts for the manifold cultural forces that drive a place. Through the travelling studio, we aim to foster broad, global-thinking problem solvers, versed in the physical mechanisms (infrastructural, geographical) and cultural forces (political and social) that underpin urban life.
ANCB: A METROPOLITAN LABORATORY ANCB is the headquarters for an extensive international network of institutions and universities, supporting research and knowledge transfer in an environment where architects, planners, economists, philosophers, scientists, artists, engineers and ecologists come together to tackle the issues facing globalised urban environments. At ANCB, students will engage with a range of academics, researchers and specialists relevant to the themes of the studio.
Studio Leaders
Michael is a founding Design Director at Architecture Architecture. He completed his Bachelor of Planning & Design at the University of Stuttgart, Germany and his Bachelor of Architecture with honours at the University of Melbourne. Michael has over 15 years’ experience in the design of award winning residential, commercial, institutional and urban design projects. As a highly active participant in design culture, he engages in research, media, education, exhibition and publication. Michael has taught extensively both in Melbourne and abroad and was the founding Program Manager of the ANCB Metropolitan Laboratory in Berlin. He has served on the University of Melbourne’s Architecture Advisory Board, Chamber Made Opera’s Committee of Management and was a founding member of Nightingale Housing. Michael was awarded the 2016 Victorian Emerging Architect Prize and recently published a collection of poetry entitled Among Buildings.
Reading & Reference
- A Practical Guide to Squatting
- Das Hansaviertel: Ikone der Moderne
- Floor Plan Manual Housing
- Furniture, Structure, Infrastructure
- Housing +
- Interbau Berlin 1957
- Life Between Buildings
- Opportunistic Urbanism
- Spaces of Uncertainty
- Stasisland
- Self Made City
- Threshold Spaces: Transitions in Architecture
=== PLEASE NOTE: APPLICATIONS FOR THIS STUDIO ARE CLOSED AS OF 18/7/2018 ===
Travel: Week 5 | $4000
ST1/12 Mondays 15:15-18:15 in MSD Room 215
ST2/12 Thursdays 15:15-18:15 in MSD Room 141