Overview

The International Building Exhibition 1984/87 in Berlin constitutes one of the most remarkable examples to discuss ""open architecture"". Almost 10,000 dwellings were constructed or restored in the Kreuzberg districts adjacent to the Berlin Wall, inhabited about halfway by immigrants. The renowned author Esra Akcan, related in many ways to Turkey, Berlin and the USA, narrates the history and reverberations of this architectural-political event.

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9783035613742

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Einem derart haufig publizierten Thema wie der West-Berliner IBA 1984/87 noch eine neue Facette zu entlocken, ist kein einfaches Unterfangen. Umso erstaunlicher, mit welch wissenschaftlicher Leichtigkeit das Esra Akcan in ihrem Buch gelingt. (In BauNetz, 02.2020) Open Architecture is a tremendous accomplishment that invites the reader to act as a kind of postcolonial flaneur, a non-gendered figure who strolls Kreuzberg's streets, peering-- at times voyeuristically--into the open doors, hallways, courtyards, and stairwells of its trademark buildings and the intimate places that inhabitants call home. [...] Open Architecture is much more than a city tour or a history of buildings and their visionaries. It is a somber reminder of the human stakes involved in a participatory urbanism that privileges rights-bearing citzens. Akcan's call for an attention in urban planning to migrants, exiles, refugees, and other stateless persons who lack the legal and social protections of citizenship could not be more prescient at this moment. (Christina Schenkel in The Berlin Journal 32, S. 102-103, 2018) This is a commendable undertaking a field that has traditionally been dominated by coffee-table books and biographical accounts. Akcan wonderfully lays bare the tensions between the ideals of the designers of our built environment and its everyday experience, offering us insightful and the same time entertaining anecdotes about impractical floor plans and creative resident interventions. [...] This book is clearly a work of love and passion by someone interested in the history of Kreuzberg and its residents for more than academic reasons. (Tim Verlaan in H-Soz-Kult, 09.2021) In her pathbreaking book Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship, and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA-1984/87, Esra Akcan achieves three quite different things, each of them enormously important. First, she provides the best account we have of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) held in Berlin in the 1980s. Second, she makes a major contribution to the literature on Turkish guest workers in Germany. Third and finally, she proposes a new approach to the production of architecture that she terms 'open architecture.' The ambitious interweaving of these themes cuts across the usual borders between architectural history, urban sociology, and architectural theory. (Kathleen James-Chakraborty in YILLIK. Annual of Istanbul Studies, 3, 2021)

Open Architecture is a tremendous accomplishment that invites the reader to act as a kind of postcolonial flaneur, a non-gendered figure who strolls Kreuzberg's streets, peering-- at times voyeuristically--into the open doors, hallways, courtyards, and stairwells of its trademark buildings and the intimate places that inhabitants call home. [...] Open Architecture is much more than a city tour or a history of buildings and their visionaries. It is a somber reminder of the human stakes involved in a participatory urbanism that privileges rights-bearing citzens. Akcan's call for an attention in urban planning to migrants, exiles, refugees, and other stateless persons who lack the legal and social protections of citizenship could not be more prescient at this moment. Christina Schenkel in: The Berlin Journal 32 (2018), 102-103

Open Architecture is a tremendous accomplishment that invites the reader to act as a kind of postcolonial flaneur, a non-gendered figure who strolls Kreuzberg's streets, peering-- at times voyeuristically--into the open doors, hallways, courtyards, and stairwells of its trademark buildings and the intimate places that inhabitants call home. [...] Open Architecture is much more than a city tour or a history of buildings and their visionaries. It is a somber reminder of the human stakes involved in a participatory urbanism that privileges rights-bearing citzens. Akcan's call for an attention in urban planning to migrants, exiles, refugees, and other stateless persons who lack the legal and social protections of citizenship could not be more prescient at this moment. Christina Schenkel in: The Berlin Journal 32 (2018), 102-103

Author Information

Esra Akcan, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, Cornell University, NY, USA

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