Untitled - Urban Interior

Or is it the other way around? In a time where over the half of the population in the world lives in cities and
a zeitgeist, in which individuality is regarded as more important than community , is dominating, conflicts
are sure to arise and it becomes important to develop participatory concepts in order to defragment social
patterns and set the basis for common strategies of cohabitation.
For our research we decided to work with a qualitative method - the interview - rather than quantitative
methods like statistics etc. By these means we were able to trace back the histrory of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
from the 1920‘s until today from different individual positions and to understand the actual or
real aftermath of the process of gentrification. This process does not follow a general plan, but is a result
of several actors pursueing their agenda. Realizing this, the term gentrification becomes quite artificial; it
is an attempt to group a variety of individual interests which actually cannot be united. So instead of thinking
how gentrification itself can be managed, it is more important to focus on the sub-processes and deal
with their reasons and intentions.
Which role can architects play in this situation? In present perception of the context architects work in,
these matters are related to sociology. However, the current process of urbanization and densification
demands greater awareness and sensibility for social processes and structures. Participatory methods
should become a part of the analysis architects perform. Communication concepts should be introduced
before the actual architectural intervention. In dense urban structures common sense counts more than
the accumulation of individual interests.