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“FUSION CITIES – consolidation of movement” was an urban design seminar at TU Darmstadt in 2009.

Two cities divided by a border are growing together. The moving particles of this inter-cultural exchange leave their footprint in the landscape – the urban landscape. A border is a thin line between them, an area like an enclave or an undefined moving line, sometimes not even visible.
In the course we have analyzed the original state of the cities and how it got reformed by the exchange through the years.
What is strongly restricted by the border? (people, goods, …)
What does not care about the border? (internet, climate, geography, culture …)
Switching from border and flows (network/negative space) to city (footprint/positive space) and back again we have drawn maps and diagrams to compare the several pairs of fusion cities.

During the seminar of the summer term 2009 at PAR, TU Darmstadt, the students analyzed four different types of borders: natural, artificial, political, and social. Three analytical steps were taken by the students: borders, cities, movements to then finally distill a still image ‘consolidation of movement’.

BRAKIN_natural : Brazzaville and Kinshasa by Humerto Sarabio and Marion Bouchard
SAN JUANA_artificial : San Diego and Tijuana by Julio Obregon Zepeda and Anne Touchet
JERUSALEM_political : East and West Jerusalem by Slobodan Suboti? and Petko Gogov
FAVEMINIO_social : Favela and Condominio in Rio de Janeiro by Eleni Sougaris

Intro on ‘borders’ by Kathrin Wieck, organizer of BORDERlining, TU Berlin, Traila
Cover by Deniz Köse // sponsored by dm.folien.com
Music “Todo amor do Mundo” (ft. CDala, Avery Fantom, Stefsax, Colab, BillRay Drums, Anchor Mejans, Greg Baumont, Furkosbot) by shagrugge @ ccMixter.org
all licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) in 2009.
Seminar by Jula-Kim Sieber.

The language of this book here is mostly visual, which enables the viewer to an intuitive comparison of each of the fusion cities and the analytical steps.

you can see all the results at our blog FUSION CITIES and download the PDF and listen to the audio-files of FAVEMINIO online.

I will start from now on a new category called ‘just for your eyes’ which are just fotos, images, or any visual stuff. The thing is to not comment it at all and wait for your reactions.

If you have made fotos during the World Music Day, you can send them to me and I will update the show. If you are sending a foto or a drawing, please tell me, where it was, who made it and a title (or so). Send JPGs (450px x 450px max) to julakim (at) ar2com (dot) de.

There are pictures from Matongé, Brussels, Belgium and Darmstadt, Germany.

Fête de la Musique in Matongé, Brussels.
Matongé is a sort of black ghetto in Brussels. The district is in the
centre of the city, and you can walk through without problem, you just
feel like in Africa for 300 meters. The name comes from a district in
Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Repuplic of Congo, a former
belgian colony.
This year, the first district party took place at the same time as “la
fête de la musique”. Here a few impressions.

Fête de la Musique in Darmstadt, Germany
It was very small and familiar and actually I was surprised to have a World Musique Day in this little town (200.000 inhabitants). But the location is quite interesting. It is the Jugendstil exhibition area from the beginning of the XX. century called Mathildenhöhe.

Prefer a slideshow?