Mobility, and flexibility were the buzzwords of the new economy – over the past few years there has been a fascination with the flow of information and capital, and the transformation in lifestyles, as a result of the new regime of flexible accumulation.

However in the face of the worldwide economic slump, the positivism that fuelled mobility theories, the fascination with urban density, telematics, urban nomadism, the tele-worker, has abated: the „after the crash“ mentality has led to a radical rethinking based on the negative impact of globilised, mobilised economies. The freelancer, the tele-worker, are faced with the fundamental insecurities inherent in the information economy; cities, such as those in the former East Germany, are losing up to 20% of their population, turning the legacies of socialist mass housing into empty shells. The urban nomad, armed with laptop and mobile phone, is often more slave to the market than benefitting from it.

Berlin is also a case in point – over the past years it has sought to compete with the strategically significant cities in the era of global capital defined variously as „service city, capital city, new media city, olympia city“, and yet faced with 17% unemployment, it has failed to live up to its many grandiose projected identities. Instead it is now more of a border city replete with informal and „shadow“ economies where, in the absence of new industrial investment, micro-production networks rely on self-organised and autonomous subsystems: A city for temporary and transitional architectures responding to the “economy of scarcity”. (Mangelwirtschaft.)

This contempory condition is the point of departure for urban drift this year – a reflection on the paradigm shift in perceptions of mobility, on cities in a state of flux, on drawing inspiration from self-organised micro-systems, the uncontrolled and the unplanned in the urban landscape.

The architectural discourse of the past few years has also reflected this seemingly boundless enthusiasm for concepts of global mobility. Mobile gadgetry, and the aesthetics of movement, and the seemingly unlimited possibilities of computer-driven design have spawned architectural forms reminiscent of the utopian urban visions of Archigram, Constant, and the futurists of the 1960’s. „Datascapes“ - complex statistical analysis of urban realities – have enabled a birds-eye perspective of the vital phenomena of mobility – traffic flow, crowd movements, and seasonal migration.

However, this fascination for form and surface in architecture, and in urbanism on „zenith vision“ of cities, as Stefano Boeri has called it, provides for an architecture of over-definition and a rather distanced, structuralist representation of diffused urban realities; one which offers statistical evidence on a macro scale but which does not take account of anti-planning, and of customised, hybridised architectures which defy classification – or indeed, of the subjective gaze so important when „reading“ a city.

There is also a shift in focus taking place in architectural discourse which reflect the „shrinkage“ of resources in urban economies - Post-industrial landscapes, peripheral and residual spaces, suburban landscapes and urban voids – abandoned and overlooked, are becoming a major focus for a generation of architects and urban planners. Such places offer untapped potential for a more optimistic and adventurous kind of urbanism, reconfiguring and redefining space, in highly individualistic ways.

Urban Drift this year will be looking at the shift in the role of the architect, at forming new multi-disciplinary coalitions which engage with residual, overlooked urban spaces and architectures.

How can architects, and urbanists, develop a language and a means of analysis which reflects the local, the spontaneous, the unplanned and the erratic: the micro-scale, and in doing so, act upon the evolution of today’s urban spaces? How can the language of urbanism accommodate the state of flux, the dynamic processes of change in urban landscapes? How can the tools of electronic media - mobile and wireless telecommunications system be implemented effectively to recreate, and redefine a sense of place; a sense of mobile connectivity? Is a new kind of public space – and political identification - evolving as a result? Can architecture and urbanism provide structures which accommodate the patterns and tendencies of wireless local area networks? Can architecture fill the gaps in urban landscapes opened up by economies in a state of stagnation? Can architects make more of less? Can a policy of temporary use in future change the machinations of the property development sector and influence urban planning?

Tactical Mobility

Perhaps the potential generated by flux – both economic and urban - lies precisely in the fact that spaces left out of the collective gaze can be redefined through minimal interventions rather than new architectures. Cafe Moskau is a prime example - a distinctive building of the early 1960’s GDR, 5 minutes from Alexanderplatz and left empty for several years is a vast location for urban drift – one which also requires a celebration of its emptiness, its in-betweeness. Standing at the brink of redefinition, such architectures hold far greater potential for architects than so many anonymous new office complexes. Could the void – and negative space, become positively charged; a new design mandate?