Project Management in Urban Design is collaborating with Hallo e.V. on their model project “Schule am Bullenhuser Damm”. The former school on Bullenhuser Damm in Hamburg-Rothenburgsort is an important memorial site commemorating the crimes of National Socialism. On the night of April 20, 1945, twenty Jewish children and at least 28 adults were murdered here by the SS. The memorial site “Kinder vom Bullenhuser Damm”, which was created in 1980 as a result of civil society engagement, continues to commemorate this cruel act to this day.

Apart from the memorial site and a daycare center, large parts of the building have been vacant for years. The “Modellprojekt Schule am Bullenhuser Damm” is now being created at this location. The former school is to become a community-oriented meeting, learning, and working place—organized in solidarity and supported by the people who use it. The aim is to create an open space for self-organized and anti-fascist urban development in the vacant rooms. The “WERK” concept developed by Hallo: e.V., originally planned for the Bille power plant and funded by the Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung (Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development), forms the basis for the financing and utilization concept and can now be implemented at this new location following the sudden change of the owner and withdrawal of collaboration on the Bille power plant.

Together with Hallo: e.V., we want to explore the following questions: How can a dialogue on urban development oriented towards the common good be initiated at this historic location? How can participation in the design and use of space be organized here? How can we use spatial processes to preserve memories, how can we unfold and archive these, and how can an exchange about the history and future of historic locations be facilitated? Can temporary spatial interventions serve as thresholds between the past, present, and future? And how can certain spatial functions be materialized and stabilized that can serve as infrastructure for future building uses?

The seminar will accompany the initiators from their move into the school to its initial opening phase and will develop a “project” on this spatial transformation process. It will end with a reflection and joint documentation of the “project.” The students will work on site and together as a group.

The seminar BS-M-001-203 Basics: Project management in UD stands in relation to the lecture BS-M-001-101 Basics: Projektmanagement. While the lecture looks at project management in context to building production and metropolis development, the seminar will test out methods, tools and theories of Urban Design within a collective project. The theoretical-conceptual framework for the seminar (=project) are the “modes of PLAY”, developed by the study program and consisting of the phases A) coming into play, B) how to play, C) play and D) understanding the play.