Kotti (revisited), 2010
Fine Art Print
Dimensions: 157 x 160 cm

KOTTBUSSER TOR: 2008, 2010, 2014

Kottbusser Tor is a transport hub formed by the meeting of several main roads in Kreuzberg that is dominated by a monolithic building: the Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum (NKZ). Built between 1969-1974, its architect Johannes Uhl had intended it to be the centrepiece of a larger regeneration plan for the area which would have seen a motorway pass just north of the NKZ. Uhl had envisioned a wide provision of communal amenities to accompany his housing scheme, but the comprehensive version of the proposal never came to fruition.

Spanned a period of nearly ten years, these works explore not only the gaps left behind by these ideas never realised but also the negative space created by those which were built. Appearing as voids in my architectural drawing and sculpture, they are revealed to be anything but empty. Instead, space is appropriated by the community that live there. Where redevelopment has failed, repurposing has triumphed: ceilings have been lowered, windows have been blacked out or newly installed, spaces intended as passageways to pass through have instead become meeting places to spend time in.

Text: Fiona Shipwright, a part of “Unchartered Ground: Larissa Fassler’s Psychogeographic Cartographies”, Uncube Magazine” Download full article.

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