Projekte - Marion Kalmer Architekten

The periphery as an environment is always defined in relationship to the traditional city. Not reaching the qualities of this romantic archetype it is read as monotone and fissured. The neighbourhood of different programs, the various scales, the variety of styles, the undefined empty spaces and the dominance of infrastructure produces an image of the unplanned and arbitrary. Ruthlessly expanding this urban landscape as the dominant mode of development lacks both a positive idea and future-based strategies that are sustainable. What appears arbitrary has in fact clearly defined reasons, which are not derived from urban and regional planning purposes but from political, economical and private interests. The periphery is the mirror of our own democracy and capitalist market-driven society. Urbanists and architects seem to be powerless with respect to the pressures that determine generic spatial processes. They are forced to accept certain developments and predominant phenomena as the driving forces for any further development in order to react reasonably. Working with the existing tendencies and their subversive manipulation can lead to a successful transformation without identically reproducing the periphery. The aim is not to compare the periphery to the traditional idea of the city but to constrain the approach to the characteristics of the agglomeration.
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