SEAM CITY | Assemblages, Interfaces, Atmospheres
Seminar Description
Berlin can be approached as a city composed less of continuity than of seams: Places where distinct urban fabrics meet, ...
SEAM CITY | Assemblages, Interfaces, Atmospheres
Seminar Description
Berlin can be approached as a city composed less of continuity than of seams: Places where distinct urban fabrics meet, overlap, clash, or remain unresolved. These urban thresholds are not merely lines on a map but spatial situations where form, movement, and senses are negotiated. The seminar uses the notion of stitching to critically examine how Berlin’s urban environments are assembled through technical systems, historical layers, and everyday practices, producing interfaces that are at once material and perceptual.
Through guided readings and on-site investigations, students will explore selected “stitching” conditions across the city, in relation to political and environmental regimes, technological infrastructures, and scientific paradigms. We will investigate how technology and aesthetics co-constitute environmental assemblages by drawing on Simondon's concept of techno-aestheticism, which provides a framework for understanding how technical objects and infrastructures participate in shaping sensorial experiences and urban form.
Peter Sloterdijk's atmospheric politics will be central to our inquiry, considering how atmospheric, material, and technological enclosures form and shape Berlin's landscapes. Galison’s work on objectivity will inform a critical view of how scientific and technological models construct what counts as a boundary, a connection, or a field of influence. Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage and deterritorialization will allow us to interpret stitched conditions as processes rather than static edges, foregrounding the tension between control, resistance, and improvisation in the production of urban space.
