“City” is a multidimensional, relational, and dynamic entity. It is the active realm of different interests, a mental construct, and the subject of our research. But how can it be described and how to differentiate city and the urban?


This seminar takes us through varied terrain: through familiar or unfamiliar cities, through books, websites, but also political situations or everyday conflicts. We encouter borders, breaks, and fragments of time-related layers; but how do they reveal their methods of production? How do we get the urban to speak? How can it be recorded and evaluated? What can we learn from it and how can we make it available as knowledge?

Diagrams not only reveal a specific method of representing complex urban contexts; they are also a unique tool that can generate untapped options for action. Diagrams can “re-present” facts, lines of argument, and thought processes, but they can also function projectively and refer to fields of action yet realized or generate them productively. In this seminar, we will address the theoretical and practical sides of these two aspects of diagrammatics. The prerequiste is a completed work study. The result will be a book.