reSITE, an international urban provocator and multi-industry debate platform, has teamed up with renowned holiday-rental platform Airbnb to organise one-of-a-kind one-day event to discuss the constraints of the collective efforts in cities. 

Titled "My City / Your City: Constraints of the Collective", the evening salon will take place on December 1st in Berlin, holding a comfy panel discussion with international guests - including landscape architect Martin Rein-Cano, Anna Scheuermann, curator of German Pavilion in Venice Architecture Biennale 2016, Dutch artist and writer Charlie Koolhaas and curator, writer and educator Lukas Feireiss.

"This is the kickoff event in a pilot series that will focus on sharing, innovation and cohesion incities. Four international guests from art,architecture and creative fields will seek inspiringand innovative models of urban and architecturaldevelopment that benefits more people," said reSITE, regarding the event.

"We are agents of change; of identifying it, of embodying it," said Martin Barry, reSITE’s Chairman.

Image © Artem Sapegin

Organized in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Prag and Studio Lukas Feireiss, the panel discussion "My City / Your City" will critically explore the design and experience of heterogeneous urban space that plays a crucial role in intelligently responding to the plurality of the city. Four international thought leaders from arts and architecture, who tend to swim against the current, will bring those questions into broader perspective. 

"Rapid urbanization and the resultant influx into big cities require fresh thinking and a new and innovative approach to urban planning. The efficient use of resources is a critical consideration in this regard. Equally important is countering anonymity and bringing people closer together again," said Alexander Schwarz, Country Manager, Airbnb Germany.

The discussion will be moderated by one of them, the Berlin-born curator and writer Lukas Feireiss. "Every city strives from this diversity: It needs consensus as much as it needs conflict as its enabling forces," explained Lukas Feireiss.

The event will take place in the Freunde von Freunden Friends Space and includes a party and DJ. The Salon is open to social innovators, architects, researchers, journalists, students, artists, cultural and municipal leaders, and everybody else who is concerned about a better future of our cities. 

The entry is free upon registration, but secure your seat from here.

Martin Rein-Cano: "Many people wish to live in their city in a stable harmony. The conflicts of a society reveal themselves in a park," says the creator of one of the most exciting and diverse squares on the planet, Superkilen Park in Copenhagen. 

Enfant terrible of today's landscape architecture and urbanism world, Martin Rein-Cano is the Founder and Managing Partner of Topotek1 in Berlin.

Anna Scheuermann is most recently known for her curation of Making Heimat at La Biennale di Venezia in 2016. The work was internationally lauded for its timeliness and provocation. She is an architect, curator and author working with DAM, the German architecture museum in Frankfurt a/M.

Dutch artist and writer Charlie Koolhaas is intrigued by the "tensions that arise from the clashing together of differing ideologies and lifestyles." She documents the process through which multi-culturalism spurns new cultural hybrids, examining the meaning of ‘identity’ at a time when identities are constantly dissolved and re-made.

Lukas Feireiss is a curator, writer and educator. His Berlin-based creative practice Studio Lukas Feireiss focuses on the cultivation of contemporary cultural reflexivity through the discussion and mediation of architecture, art and visual culture in the urban realm. He teaches at various universities worldwide, and is the director of the Master’s programme Radical Cut-Up at Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam.

"The city as a commons is a shared resource that belongs to all of its inhabitants, and as such should be actively shaped by everyone, often considered a possible answer to rampant privatization and top- down decision making. When there is an ‘us’, there is always a ‘them,’ and the threat of isolation for those not integrated or included."

Program 

19:00-19:30:  Welcome drinks

19:30: Martin Barry | reSITE; Alexander Schwarz | Airbnb

19:45-21:00: Panel discussion with international guests

21:00-22:00: Cocktail Party and DJ Sasha Michailidis, former director of Prague legendary Radio 1

Venue: Freunde von Freunden Friends Space, Glogauer Straße 2,10999 Berlin

All images courtesy of reSITE, unless otherwise stated

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