Latz + Partner: Bad Places and Oases

Location: AedesLand, Savignyplatz, Else-Ury-Bogen 600 - 601, 10623 Berlin Duration: September 5. - October 31. 2008 Opening: Friday, September 5. 2008, 6.30 pm Hours: daily 10 am – 8 pm "Bad Places" – that is all sorts of urban wasteland, landfills, also neglected parks and environmentally harmful traffic facilities. In their exhibition in AedesLand, Latz + Partner show the dealing with these places – due to a must beyond aesthetic demands in a time, where we are faced with space getting constantly smaller but are still affording new wastes. “Oases”, selective interventions and special places give an answer to bad places. First, the point is to accept the devastated polluted spaces, to find out the qualities existing even there and to reveal the layers which promise exciting information. Landscape does not exist physically, but represents a repertoire of different information which the beholder combines differently all over again. It is the philosophy of Latz + Partner to help with this and to furnish new ideas for it. Key projects of the exhibition are designs for the future: Hiriya, Tel Aviv and Crystal Palace Park, London. Parts of realized examples complement the projects which are still in the planning phase – such as the blast furnace park in Duisburg, the Old Harbour in Bremerhaven, the urban transformation on the Plateau de Kirchberg in Luxembourg. Participation is of great importance. As a matter of course, ecological approaches are running through the whole work. The Hiriya Landfill transformation results from an international competition in 2004 for Tel Aviv’s gigantic refuse dump. A mountain of rubbish remains a mountain of rubbish, but it changes its character and elements standing before for ugliness and contamination turn into symbols of an ecological renewal. The bad place becomes a usable park and an experimental field for recycling. The new urban and landscape development of Crystal Palace Park was planned in 2006/07. Once the world’s first and largest amusement and recreation park, the site had framed Joseph Paxton’s famous Crystal Palace. Historic relics should be preserved. But working on this dilapidated parcelled area burdened with disturbing built-in elements, requires both an aesthetic and political reorientation and public participation in the regeneration process. The Master Plan shows the vision of the park’s future. Projects and publications see http://www.latzundpartner.de Speakers for the opening are: Kristin Feireiss, Berlin Prof. Udo Weilacher, Hannover Dr. Martin Weyl, Jerusalem