As part of an ongoing investigation and dialogue about new design modes, concepts and tools and interdisciplinar connections in architeture and urban design, the Masters Urban Design and Research project “Cosmopolitan Habitat: Urban Narratives for Halle” was directed in summer 2020 and with the challenge of the ongoing Corona Crisis, at the Institute for Urban Design and Planning at Leibniz Universität Hannover; It explores urban narratives as space-bound devices for the analysis and understanding of the city through the already existing and uses narratives as design tools for a knowledge creation and projection within the process of formulating performative and sustainable scenarios for the future of Halle/Saale as creative and productive city: Halle as Research-Site in former East-Germany is a very heterogenous city that is knowledge city with its connection to various universities, a cultural city with its small galleries, the Burg-Hchschule with a well known arts- and design department and several active artists and initiatives within the city context as well as a city of international inhabitants, relating especially to the neighbourhood of “Halle-Neustadt”-
The course departetd from an Analysis + Conceptual part – the theoretical study of literature (contemporary urban design, narratives + sociological / philosophical positions on “the Cosmopolitan”) and a collection of international refernce projects, followed by a creative mapping task, bringing together historical, social, political, economic, ecological and territorial phenomena through 1. individual (virtual) urban explorations and data collection 2. previously prepared google-picture maps and presentations by me (Hometown Halle), and 3. perspectives and inputs from local experts, met on a digital plattform? During the Design Phase the students were encouraged to continue to research and test new ways of telling and present their ideas with tools from other disciplines, like visual!
Riccarda Cappeller M. Sc. M.A. is a lecturer, researcher and PhD candidate at the Institute of Urban Design and Planning, Leibniz Universität Hannover (Prof. Jörg Schröder) with a research interest in interdisciplinary design modes and narratives for mixed urban spaces. 2019 AULET Research funding of Leibniz University Hannover. Since 2015 Architectural Journalist at baunetz, Politik&Kultur. MA of Visual Sociology, Goldsmiths University London, final work: “The presence of absence written in space. Creating situations for communicative memory.” MA of Science in Architecture, Bauhaus Universität Weimar 2015, Universidad de Buenos Aires 2014, ETSAM, Politecnica Madrid 2012, Final work: “Living in the casa chorizo. Basic form, modification, variation, change”, transformation of a housing typology in Buenos Aires. Recognition Daniel Gössler Preis, Bauhaus-Graduation funding. Recognition Daniel Gössler Preis. During studies she worked at IBA Thüringen and was part of the lecture and architectural magazine team Horizonte. Since 2013 several Collaborations with Exyzt/Constructlab.