Geneology of techno culture and its relation ot borders

The reason why I started this research was my admiration of the music and a great desire to go beyond the negative connotation of this cultural movement. I perceived it as an explorer. I was surprised to descover that it all began in Detroit, USA, as it was a hub for electronics production, but at the same time place of extreme segregation and marginalization of Black people.

Case study on borders

Berlin, Germany good-bad

The opposition between ideologies where one is portrayed as better than the other creates a strong desire for borderline crossing.

When the Berlin Wall was erected, the area along it became uninhabitable, and most of the buildings became vacant, leading to the marginalization of some groups. At this point, the center acquired the qualities of the periphery and vice versa.

Belfast, Northern Ireland good-good

In this case, both sides perceive themselves as good and reject the values and morals of the opposition. This approach leads to the strengthening of the physical and mental borders and differences.

Then the music of the new age - electronic music evolved extremely attractive with its absence of text, and alien sounds, resembling a space odyssey - something outside of man, which brings him on a journey through unexplored and utopian territories. There you can remake yourself and be whatever you desire.

Observations

1. decadence (for example, segregation led to extreme and spatial separation)

2. existing material border - the Berlin wall that generated a powerful desire for runaway

3. opposition of ideologies where one of them is perceived as good and the other as bad

4. critical group of individuals in transition that want to construct their own ideology marginalized communities in search of identity voids, islands, social architecture, people in transition

The Tempelhof airport was built between 1936 and 1941 and is no longer functioning.

It is now in the city’s heart as the urban sprawl left this large territory untouched and like a fresh breather in the dense sur roundings.

The airport was part of West Germany during the Cold War and particularly belonged to the Americans. For this reason, it holds physical evidence of this cultural junction as the basketball hall just above the main hall, bowling, and furniture. The numerous investor inquiries didn’t lead to a transformation of the area into a residential one because of the activists’ groups of architects and citizens.

Existing Field Condition

References

An island is any object lost in an endless extension of a uniform element. As such, the island is isolated. The island is by definition remote, separated, intimately alternative. The island is elsewhere.

San Rocco Magazine: Islands

O. M. Ungers’s “Berlin as Green Archipelago” the project consisted of approximately sixty isolated “urban islands” floating within the ocean of open spaces surrounded by the Berlin Wall

Cocepts appropriated by Gilles Deleuze”s Desert Islands continental island - a fragment, a remnant in the city’s urban fabric; could be explored and understood through its connection to the environment and history oceanic island - an autonomic system whose outer borders relate equally to the outer world in a defensive manner

Characteristics of the location experimentations with models

Morphology of the towers

I explored the morphologhy of the existing towers of the airport building in search of a new sutble formal expression that has a poetic meaning.

Existing towers new functional scheme(orange-refugee camp; yellow-recoring studios,audio and visual archive,museum and exhibition space) symbolic gesture that marks the methaphorical island experimentations with models on borderline conditions: openings: experiments in search of common structucal language stucture of a single tower unit dissembled unit combinations living organism new spatial organisation

The variable configurations and variations symbolize different borderline conditions according to their relation to the inside and the outside of the circle. Paradoxically the inner part portrays “the utopian no man’s land” where one could be free of inherited connotations, whereas the outside stands for the old world order.

Spatial organisation of the new interventions

The research resulted in a proposal to reuse Tempelhof airport but keep its symbolic meaning and structural organization of the area, characterized by an opposition between the center and periphery and the appearance of the building as a giant protective fortress.