Riccarda Cappeller:
Cooperative Architecture. A performative perspective on urban change and architectural design research
Doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of Architecture and Landscape of Leibniz University Hannover.
Supervisors: Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Jörg Schröder (Leibniz University Hannover), Prof. Dr. ir. Roberto Cavallo (Technical University Delft)
Supported by AULET, the LUH Faculty of Architecture and Landscape’s Research Incentive Programme, and by STA mobility in the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.
This research addresses a necessary paradigm shift in architecture and urban design as well as the to this related expanded perspective on spatial situations and their continuous processes of change. The urban space, the actions that take place within it and their performativity serve as the central basis for the concept of Cooperative Architecture, which is applied in three case studies and is examined and defined through them. The case studies; 1. Granby Four Streets in Liverpool, 2. Can Batlló in Barcelona and 3. ExRotaprint in Berlin are thus simultaneously research objects and media and become part of the results through their contents and the visual communication.
Central to the research work is a method-based approach that highlights the process of designing - experimenting, testing, creating variants and finding different approaches - as a central working method of architecture and shows how it can be used in research. In order to make the case studies tangible in their complexity, artistic methods are formulated and used as approaches that - according to the central thesis - make the invisible visible, allow the built space to speak and can grasp the cultural capacity, atmosphere and the cha- racter or value of urban spaces.
Starting from a referential framework to be located in urban planning and an initial consideration of the case studies, the characteristics of Cooperative Architecture are established and, building on this, deepened in the empirical part of the thesis. The methods developed and discussed in collaboration with students are ‚mapping‘ as an analytical-projective approach and ‚filmmaking‘ as a narrative-reflexive approach.
Historical references, architectural theoretical references and current dis- courses on design and research in architecture serve as the basis for the em- pirical part of the work. The Cooperative Architecture concept thus essentially aims to approach a holistic understanding of architecture again. It incorporates social, political and historical processes as well as the examination of built space. Architecture becomes cooperative insofar as it serves as a spatial start- ing point for reflection, can be read and interpreted, emerges as an integrative discipline in exchange with others and is to be examined as a continuous pro- cess with different approaches and subject areas.
The methodologically diverse approach, which becomes visible as a process in the course of the work, questions current modes in the practice of design and research and proposes new methods for an experimental, open and interdisci- plinary approach. The process of generating and communicating urban know- ledge is linked to a contextual, conceptual and critical approach that thinks spatial-material and social aspects together in different ways.
