IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

This presentation that is about a new book entitled Reframing Berlin: Architecture, Memory-Making and Film Locations (2023, www.intellectbooks.com/reframing-berlin) will outline a broad research project at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, memory studies and film studies, which started 10 years ago in 2013. The book creates a megastructure of what the authors call ‘urban strategies’, the architectural/urban transformations in the city that influence not only the built environment but also urban memory over the decades. Using collaged imagery of film locations from Berlin films made between 1895 and the 2020s as an architectural archive, the research proposes 12 non-inclusive urban strategies that aim to create an innovative and holistic way of looking at the complex urban and political history of cinematic Berlin through a contemporary architectural lens. Demolition, temporary installation, new construction, appropriation, preservation, supplementation, adaptation, Disneyfication, mutation, relocation, suspension, and finally memorialisation are Berlin’s urban strategies, each discussed through two case studies in the book. Our talk will touch on top-down and grassroots implementations of these strategies and conclude with how this flexible megastructure can be applied to other cities with or without difficult histories.