ichbaumit – Urban development in practice

Enrica Ferrucci:After many years of professional experience as an architect, I realised that I needed a new field of action. Looking back, it was not by chance that I first came across working with children in museums. There I began to develop spatial construction projects to match exhibitions and thus themes from architecture, design, art, ecology, which specifically transport content into the minds of others. In the workshop we build these projects together with children, teens and adults. The craftsmanship challenges, involves and consolidates information and makes the participants want to learn - about architecture, about the city, about more. And that's exactly what interests me: the process, the joint experimentation and design, the gain in self-confidence, suggestions and future goals of the participants. Circularity, everyday life, quality of life, sustainability, democracy, society: everything is connected and can be well (v)identified from building culture. The key to this is called: spatial perception. It automatically turns participants into co-creators of the city, society and the future. In the museum as elsewhere.

Enrica Ferrucci:It is important to me to generate interest and fun in building culture, especially in children and young people. And self-confidence. So that we all deal differently - more attentively - with our (built) environment in the future.

Enrica Ferrucci:Working with the tapes is new at first, but everyone quickly finds their rhythm and methodology. We work together and yet each for ourselves, concentrated and usually without many words. The tapes speak for us and show our ideas, commonalities and differences in a very fitting way, which then grow together into a great whole. That is an event every time.

Enrica Ferrucci:Children do not question themselves the way adults do: if they see a problem, they look for a solution. Children are also never too shy to find another solution if the first one didn't work. They don't fail, they search! And they have another super talent: patience. We adults sometimes need a bit more of a run-up to open up and move forward freely. We become self-critical more quickly and can learn a lot from children (again). In my view, good ideas of any kind - also for the future of cities - are not a matter of age, but of freedom of thought and openness.

Enrica Ferrucci:Building culture is part of our everyday life and the teaching of basic (urban) building knowledge, the experience of the interfaces of architecture with art, design, ecology or social issues is, in a way, shaping the future. Nevertheless, the question is too often asked: 'WHAT IS building culture education? In my view, more clarity is needed here. I intend to continue working (hard) on this. I want to invent many more projects, hold workshops, get to know and interest people, and one day sit by the sea, old and content, and write a book about it all.

Enrica Ferrucci:My workshop in Munich is a disused, converted tram from the seventies and is located in the Bahnwärter Thiel, a disused railway area with stacked overseas containers, caravans, underground, suburban and tram trains, in which creative people have their studios - raised without an architect's hand. Now I'm very excited about the POP KUDAMM and I'm sure GRAFT Architects have worked their magic on you. So I'm looking forward to bringing architecture into architecture and discovering your location.

Enrica Ferrucci:I think interim uses are a good signal. That there are gaps in the city system that are uncovered, occupied and brought to life by cultural actors. The question I always ask the children is: should these special places that enrich our cities so much continue to be created by private (non-public) initiative? The fact that we keep reinventing places with temporary uses is certainly part of our future. The point is whether it remains in the mode of exception or whether a system is set in motion. There is still a lot of room for improvement.

Enrica Ferrucci: Diversity is more, also in architecture. If different buildings shape the face of the city, that's positive at first. The art, however, is to create coherences, a kind of design oversum that results in a coherent picture. You could argue about this on Kurfürstendamm, but you can do the same elsewhere (and that would be a good idea for a workshop). Almost more important: behind every building envelope is a specific building use - and this interplay is actually more essential for the city and its inhabitants, also and especially for our future.

Enrica Ferrucci:That Berlin becomes even more liveable. For everyone, regardless of where they come from, their history, profession and wallet. And greener. The summers are getting hotter, and only trees can fix it for us.