Magazine

UKR Spielstrasse 8884 c Henning Rogge

More Animals and Plants in the City – The Spielstraßen GmbH

by Jana Kerima Stolzer

The Olympics as a playful Approach to trying out a new world, a source of inspiration for ideas on democratic participation, a leap of faith from the present into a more humane Concept of the future. Looking back at the Games in Munich, Robert Jungk described a vision in 1972 that expresses a yearning for equalised conditions: both the original and the author’s future image of the Olympics celebrate peace between nations, peace that goes hand in hand with liberation from dependence, power relations, and fears. According to Jungk, the rigid structures Controlling the lives of working people have led to the loss of playfulness and inherent creativity. The Olympic Spielstraße (play street) undertook an Experiment by encouraging collective play and spontaneity. People from different backgrounds were invited to engage with new developments, to rediscover the playful child within for free and outdoors: to jump on mats filled with water, to use their hands and feet to make metal objects resonate, to witness the coincidentally passing train to the 2000 Olympics, and finally, to enjoy music and dancing until late at night. On the opening day of the Spielstraße, the radio Station Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) recorded some opinions in the audience:

Reporter: How do you feel about this kind of theatre?

1st woman: I don’t like it at all. Too noisy for me.
1st man: I think it’s great.
2nd man: They’re playing, they aren’t trying to achieve anything. An end in itself. It’s also fun for the audience. The audience is engaged. This whole thing is entirely pointless, but there
doesn’t always have to be a point.
3rd man: Yeah, it’s quite nice to watch. Something different, relaxed.
4th man: Complete nonsense. I don’t know.
2nd woman: We’re also wondering and keep making suggestions.
5th man: For one thing, they’re speaking English, for another, there’s no stage, it’s all a mess.

Reflecting on the 1972 Spielstraße and the experiences in Munich, Herbert Hohenemser, Munich’s cultural affairs commissioner, concluded that future editions should take place in the inner city. He believed the intended purpose of generating cultural spaces could only function in contexts with an established practice of community, politics, and communication. Werner Ruhnau had already explored these “meeting places” before the first conceptions of the Olympic Spielstraße. In 1968 he published an article in the magazine Baumeister with the heading: Körper – Krypto – Mikro – Meso – Makro – Klima – Planung (body – crypto – micro – meso – macro – climate – planning). He used the term “Umweltklima (ambient climate)” to describe the immediate atmosphere surrounding all beings. Temperature, light, acoustics, humidity affect the human body, trigger sensations, and thus, influence social interaction. When the temperature is mild and the sun is shining, most people are eager to go outdoors, to indulge in social activities, and are more open to their surroundings. Spaces should consequently be planned around humans as sentient beings, regarding both architecture and culture. Ruhnau believed urban planning teams should include sculptors, musicians, and painters as well as sociologists, psychoanalysts, and architects. When implementing and redeveloping an environment, the artificial ambient climate should align with the ideal conditions for concentrated work and physical effectiveness. According to a study by Victor Olygay, Princeton University, the optimal climatic environment for intellectual work is 20-22 °C, 20-80% humidity, 40-50 dB, and 100-3000 lux.

If humans have been adapting their natural body climate to their surroundings with the aid of protective layers of clothing and housing for centuries, then urban living spaces can be conceived comparatively. Artificial protective covers could shield public spaces from sun and rain. A modern architect should also take physiology and bioclimatology into consideration. In which conditions do city dwellers feel most comfortable, which temperatures inspire movement, which lighting conditions are best for working on a computer? At first sight, modern shopping centres and office landscapes seem to have partly realised this architectural vision. Light, temperature, and ambient noise are suited to the ideal conditions. However, in contrast to Ruhnau’s vision, this architecture was privately commissioned, it neither inspires free movement within the given space, nor does it allow access to all. Ruhnau’s ambient climate refers to the city as such and its function as an integral living space, planned by the public sector with the aim of creating a liveable and humane environment for all.

In view of the existing cities and their structures, this endeavour seems utopian: these cities are built and inhabited. Unsurprisingly, the hastily created post-war architecture provided many authors with food for thought. In 1965 Alexander Mitscherlich wrote about the city that is neither the result of century-old, naturally evolved structures, nor of consideration in his text Die Unwirtlichkeit der Städte (The Inhospitality of Cities). The city he describes consists of concrete blocks, high-rise buildings, satellite settlements, and industrial estates. The function of the different parts of the city determines the construction, facades and streets appear faceless and interchangeable, potential redesigns must bow to the random distribution of property and land situations. However, those who feel responsible for their city and wish to shape it, need objects and places they can identify with, as the author explains: streets they enjoy walking along, accessible parks, facades that tell stories, incentives to venture outdoors, inviting spaces. Based on the experiences with the Spielstraße in Munich, Ruhnau attempted to realise this utopia in 1973 and founded the Spielstraßen GmbH [Spielstraßen Gesellschaft für Umweltrehabilitation, Planung von Kommunikationsprogrammen und Bauanlagen mbH (play street association for environmental rehabilitation, planning of communication programmes and building complexes)] with a team of psychologists, artists, market researchers, sociologists, and economists in order to combat the desolation of city centres.

An excerpt from the first draft papers: The aim of this enterprise is to increase the quality of living and to provide existential welfare in urban and rural areas by developing communication programmes and building complexes. Primarily this endeavour involves suggestions for urban redevelopment, the initiation of cultural programmes, and the establishment or redevelopment of buildings as well as the design of play streets as educational leisure facilities.

The team developed a specific draft for three days of activities in Dortmund, Krefeld, Mülheim, and Wuppertal on the subject: Motivating citizens to maintain their houses; identification with streets and squares, their inhabitation; more plants and animals in the cities.

As commissioners the respective cities could choose different projects from a catalogue of topics, such as climate, animals, plants, monuments, living, or house maintenance, and the design of an individual Spielstraße. Besides accessible resonance chambers, music groups, street theatres, and artistic works, the scope of offers included workshops for dance, movement, and communication. Some of the actions referred specifically to the place for which they were to be planned. Participants were invited to cook, draw, discuss, and experience together. Some of the artists of the Munich Spielstraße can be found on the draft paper. Long before their actual realisation, the Spielstraßen GmbH appealed to the commissioners to form co-operations with local cultural associations for the play streets as a way of involving as many local agents as possible. The initiators’ aim was to revive urban public places – but also to develop suggestions that could sustain identification and animation after the temporary play street. The long-term goal of the Spielstraßen GmbH was to reintroduce squares and streets to city dwellers beyond their merely representational and infrastructural function – in keeping with Mitscherlich’s criticism of the ghettoization of cities and Jungk’s suggestions for a better future, the Spielstraßen GmbH campaigned for intermingling the different districts as well as humane rents. This included the demand for residential space in walking distance from the workplace. Planted roofs, green squares, and streets without traffic: places that are enjoyable to inhabit, that represent a piece of home, and instil their residents with a new appreciation of their living space. In the end, none of the above-mentioned cities commissioned the Spielstraßen GmbH due to the high costs.

Early on in his observations in Die Unwirtlichkeit der Städte, Mitscherlich drew the following conclusion: A person is shaped by the city and vice versa; with increasing urbanisation this affects more and more people. After the war, we missed the chance to build better conceived, essentially, new cities. Maybe this was a missed opportunity. Today, fifty years later, the buildings developed at the time are fighting for their substance, and often new structures and reconstructions seem more profitable. Cities and public spaces are still in a constant process of evolvement, the ongoing crisis brought on by privatisation and increasing digitalisation are changing their use and inhabitation. The questions of collective planning remain. Robert Jungk underscored that playing should be learned, not taught. The verb requires an active subject and alludes to a process that could continue for decades. The aim of the play streets was to inspire activity in every individual, to see the city with open eyes, and to transform it into an inviting place. This chance still exists today – contemporary play streets could also inspire wide participation in urban regeneration processes in the present. The question is which shape they would have to take in view of the digitalisation and privatisation of public spaces.

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