Keywords: "Projects" (5×)action (1×)Communication (1×)Design (3×)Dokumentation (7×)Expertinnen des Alltags (1×)matters of form (3×)medium (4×)Minimal Structure (1×)notation (3×)planning (2×)problematisation (1×)Rothenburgsort (1×)stadtteilöffentlich (1×)Uncertainty (1×)
Dominique Peck has joined the Research and Teaching Programme Urban Design’s academic staff at HafenCity University in 2015. Being a UD alumni, his work has a focus on project management, design development and transposing formats in research, teaching and practice. Dominique was co-project managing the live project Building a Proposition for Future Activities and is now focused on his PhD Project Re-positioning Project Management in Urban Design.
Bernd Kniess is an architect and urban planner. Since 2008 he is Professor for Urban Design at HafenCity Universität Hamburg where he established the Master Programme Urban Design. He is interested in the negotiation of the contemporary city, whose planning principles he aims to diagrammatically describe and transfer into a relational practice as procedure.
Peck, Dominique and Marko Mijatovic. 2016. Kick off. Basics: Project Management in Urban Design. Hamburg. CC BY-SA 4.0.
In Studio
Buchholtz, Jules, and Marko Mijatovic. 2017. Coming into Play. Basics: Project Management in Urban Design. Hamburg. CC BY-SA 4.0.
In her book Vita activa oder vom tätigen Leben, Hannah Arendt distinguishes being active from work, art and processes of production. Being active is identified as an essential human need. Activity, just like non-objective vividness, is recognized as the basic premise of interaction between individuals and the pre-condition of interplay. Following Arendt’s understanding being active lies at the heart of what can be called communication.
“Handeln und Sprechen sind nahe miteinander verwandt. Wortloses Handeln gibt es strenggenommen nicht, weil es ein Handeln ohne Handelnden wäre. Handelnd offenbaren Menschen, wer sie sind. (...) Diese Aufschluß-gebende Kraft, durch die über das Gehandelte hinaus ein Täter mit in die Erscheinung tritt, kommt in das Spiel, wo Menschen miteinander, und weder für noch gegen-einander sprechen und agieren” (Saavedra 2002, 32ff).
Acting and speaking in the eyes of Arendt are closely related and have to be understood as basic human goods. Acting is not understood as manpower or anything that should be made use of in a utilitarian sense. It is not an object of consumption or a product and neither are language and speaking just tools of addressing content. Rather both qualities have to be understood as integrative capacities and the roots of human interplay, whereupon acting deploys an even higher potential than speaking.
“Handeln und Sprechen bewegen sich in dem Bereich, der zwischen Menschen qua Menschen liegt, sie richten sich unmittelbar an die Mitwelt, in der sie die jeweils Handelnden und Sprechenden auch dann zum Vorschein und ins Spiel bringen, wenn ihr ganzer Inhalt ganz und gar ‘objektiv’ ist. (…) Diese Interessen sind im ursprünglichen Wortsinne das, was „inter-est“, was dazwischen liegt und die Bezüge herstellt, die Menschen miteinander verbinden und zugleich voneinander scheiden. Fast alles Handeln und Reden betrifft diesen Zwischenraum” (Saavedra 2002, 32ff).
Acting understood as a foundation of identity and as a tool of self-revelation means to see it as the link between individuals, a potential that cannot be made use of by just pushing a button. It cannot be deployed by just following or acting out a plan. It rather comes to life because people decide so. Being active is preceded by a decision and by an individual who decides to step in and enter the play in order to inscribe themselves into an event.
Exams
How do actors on site come into play?
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Reveal answers
A take kicks-off actions on site. The pertinent aspect of this kick-off take is that it provides a thick enough situation to immediately start acting, but must not offer a in all scales and scopes manageable task. A task would undermine the potentialities inscribed in prolific takes.
References
Saavedra, Marco E. 2002. Die deliberative Rationalität des Politischen: Eine Interpretation der Urteilslehre Hannah Arendts. Würzburg: Königshausen u. Neumann.