by: Mona Rauch, Thea Wedel, Alina Willkomm, Finn Schuck
Studio work at cue (Chair for Transitioning Urban Ecosystems)
led by Prof. Dr. Antoine Vialle at TU Berlin. Teaching team: Michel Zalis, Aniella Goldinger.
Project Abstract: Provided by the referendum-based and currently enforced Tempelhofer law, a ban on excavating the first 30cm of THF’s ground was seen as a methodological cue to understand its horizontality as the material and historical layers of a spatial continuum. Defining a taxonomy encompassing cemeteries, former airports, military areas, sewage fields and war debris deposits, the project Untouchable Soil considers the ecological and cultural toxicity, but also the sacrality of Berlin’s charismatic polluted soils as paradoxically offering an opportunity to delineate future city landscapes in which we could learn to live with existing contaminations.