A small expedition enters the huge cavity in Ameisenberg left by 40 million liters of water in the former reservoir.
The electricity has been turned off for three hours for construction work, the light beams of the flashlight illuminate the way for the group, intensifying the concentration on the audible. The soundtrack is provided by the Shakuhachi and the long reverberation of its notes. In my imagination, a ray goes straight ahead, from A to B , from the sun to the earth. However, when we speak of radiation in the physical sense, we are often dealing with waves. One characteristic of radiation can be its invisibility, which often causes discomfort, even though the effectiveness of radiation is not necessarily dangerous or harmful. The adjective "radiated" means contamination by radiation, as well as a state of rapture caused, for example, by the effects of psychoactive substances, spiritual experiences, or other influences that interfere with being with oneself and initiate a parallel state that is invisible to others.Another technique of invisibility is repression. Here, something that actually exists is brought out of the field of vision, in contrast to radiation, where seemingly non-existent things can be seen and experienced.

A hill is a naturally formed, or an artificially created elevation in the landscape, it is smaller than a mountain and not much longer than wide.Man-made mounds, such as Celtic tombs or spoil heaps, automatically have a cultural relevance, but inhabiting natural mounds also plays a role in cultural history, for example a strategic one, to be able to see in time who is coming and perhaps why. On the hill where our studio is located, it is very rare to hear the engine of a lawn mower, although there are many gardens in the area. Probably these gardens harbor few lawns or the lawn is not mowed and meadows grow, which are then cut with a scythe or grazed by cattle (geese, cows) or the grasses die, compost and become fertilizer for the following generations of vegetation in an infinite cycle. As well as for the Sequoiadendron, for which this cycle has been repeated for over 100 years and which is in direct competition with the building on the grounds of Villa Hauff, thus representing a counter-model to it and above all to the bunker and passage system (which, according to speculation, is said to be located under the villa).Speculation, legend and myth are not the same thing, but they are related in some way.

Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote: Myths have no author, as soon as they are perceived as myths, whatever their origin, they exist only embodied in a tradition. When a myth is told, the listeners receive a message that actually comes from nowhere; this is the reason why it is attributed a supernatural origin.

zoomorphic islands – a concept sketch for ISLAND or Infrastructure’s infrastructure

Invisible or neglected elements become a playground. Forgotten spaces from daily life become the center of our attention. From our habit of hasty consuming the big picture, we slow down and investigate the micro-scaled sounds. Cracks become cleavages and tiny gravels pushed around express themselves through hurtful grinding screams, while cash dispenser, electric scooters and magnetic strip reader radiate relaxing meditation fields.

Fühlerskop is an invitation to explore the already known.

The Glitch Klitsche offers the immediate solution for a long-overdue venue–an interim cinema–providing a sophisticated cultural program. The structure of the soon to be cinema is made of recycled materials assembled with no major hassle, while operating with reclaimed equipment. Offering space for a very small number of spectators, the cinema is linked to the existing urban situation of the Leonhardsvorstadt. A temporary, accessible smack as a walk-in prelude for the long-awaited return of a cinema. It is still only a few wooden boards, but soon the artists will be inviting visitors to the Richtfest ceremony in Leonhardsvorstadt....

“We have discovered how vital it is to socialize with other people and ourselves since the pandemic. This catalogue aims to collect all these long-lost interactions; it will assist you in remembering. We‘ve had enough of staying at home! It‘s now time to go out. With friends,on a date, a dinner with your family, a spontaneous meet-up with strangers... All of them can be found in Stuttgart. This map will help you find places to socialize in a variety of ways. It‘s entirely up to you and your requirements. Now open the map, select a location, and Get In Touch!”

Specially after the pandemic, urban space and physical communication is taking a very important role. As part of the Seminar “Sue Going Public”, university students had mapped the main spaces for interaction in the city center of Stuttgart. Their atlas is a starting point that everyone who is willing to get in touch with others or with its inner self in the public realm can download. To keep the social engagement growing they have created an open digital map where you can freely include other spaces of interaction.

Karen Berger, Irene Calero Pages, Diego de la Guardia, Elena Grimbacher, Shirin Hillawi, Mathilde Josse, Ann-Marie Klar, Sinem Molenaar, Manuel Motschiedler Viktoria-Louise Müller, Alptug Gökalp Namver und Maria Inês Pires Reis together with the Planning and Design Chair staff: Prof. Dr. Martina Baum, Alba Balmaseda Dominguez und Jonas Malzahn.

Back in the south of Germany, in Stuttgart, in May 2021, where the only fir tree in our studio garden is taller than all the houses around it, including our house. The tops of the fir tree were ripe for making the annual cough syrup. As I was plucking the tops, I heard a voice calling, getting louder and louder. Which I'm not sure if it was the voice getting louder or my growing attention. It was the neighbor from the house across the street, a white detached house with three very long white hanging strips of fabric. "What are you picking, what for, what are you doing with it?" I was surprised. For I thought that most people in this area were more or less influenced by anthroposophical thought, which made me think that this would give many access to the medicinal plant world. I was wrong about that. The beaming neighbor had never heard of the fir tip syrup before. It was not that I felt close to the area because of my knowledge of medicinal plants. Now, however, I felt like an outsider and figuratively saw myself almost in the role of the sister from the fairy tale The Six Swans by the Brothers Grimm, picking nettle after nettle with charcoal on my face and hiding in the dark. At the same time she told me which tea–brewed from her own daisies–beautifies the skin. She asked me for a recipe, I brought her an unusual variant for me, with honey as a substitute for the sugar, as she wished. As a thank you, I received leeks from my own garden, freshly harvested. In a sense, the fir syrup was born from this encounter, according to my recipe, the neighbor now enjoys her own syrup from these same fir tips from time to time.

Înscenarea lui Venus!

Venus de Piatra Neamț

by Kurt Grunow

The construction of the Schwabstrasse S-Bahn station in Stuttgart in 1974 can be seen as a significant addition to the stock of ‘porous’ structures in the urban fabric. This is not only because of the 1.5 km long underground turning loop branching off from the 5 km long Hasenberg tunnel south of the S-Bahn station, but also because of the extensive underground spaces created during the construction of the S-Bahn station, which is located 27 meters below the road surface. During the completion of the platform area, which was built using the cut-and-cover method, a total of three mezzanine floors were constructed on top of each other at the southern exit, which were probably created solely for the purpose of backfilling the enormous excavation pit, since the rooms were never used by the DB. The middle of these floors has a floor area of 450 square meters, the other two are probably of similar size. In other underground railroad stations of the city there are also such empty spaces designated as warehouses; sometimes they are given to groups or individuals who develop recreational activities in them, such as rock music or even railroad modeling. Model railroaders in particular find good working conditions in these capillaries of the city, because surrounded by real railroad operations, they can work all the more motivated and passionately on their downscaling to scale.
One of the most amazing activists in this field has probably been the railroad employee Wolfgang Frey–from 1992 until his early death in 2012, he built a model of the main station with all the adjoining track systems and urban areas as far as Bad Cannstatt in one direction and the west of Stuttgart in the other in that mezzanine C2 in the Schwabstrasse S-Bahn station. The fidelity of this 1:160 scale model layout is so overwhelming that SWR devoted several broadcast segments to it, press and magazines reported extensively, and in 2017 the layout was sold by the model builder's daughter to Herrenberg, where it can now be viewed by the public. However, one central component of the layout remained on the mezzanine floor: a 1:1 scale replica of Wolfgang Frey's workstation for controlling the huge model layout, modeled on the main signal box of Stuttgart station. Begleitbüro SOUP has given its place of origin the name Fortress of Loneliness and there initiated an artistic examination of the reasons and abysses of this parallel universe.

We see the model world of Wolfgang Frey as a replica of the city of Stuttgart in close connection to the mock Brazil. The question of what can be left out of Stuttgart, or how Stuttgart can be made into a city that is confusingly similar to itself, is long since become a political question against the background of current urban developments.

A forest in the Carpathians, east of Transylvania, a mixed forest, densely covered with numerous beeches. We have been there a maximum of four times, probably always in the spring, probably because the winter months sometimes seemed interminable and I had the feeling that it was summer when we hiked there.
The first part of the trail was always the same, crossing the waterworks on the Bistritza River, which has its source in the Rodna Mountains. I found crossing the waterworks an adventure and a challenge, as it was very noisy, deep and dangerous. We could see the water under our feet. Comparable to fights against monsters, which we also reenacted on the way there, the water was a dragon that did not spit fire but water, which was much more dangerous for us than the power of fire. Water sweeps away everything, even whole villages with their houses. Fire, on the other hand, could be extinguished. In contrast, floods were often impossible to fight, not in this part of the world.
To find the fir tops, we walked for hours. With our short legs, it seemed timelessly long, so we felt like the dwarves from Snow White.

Arrived at this place, far from roads, people, animals, rivers and lakes, just close to the sky, we started picking the tops. From time to time we hid, because we could smell bear droppings. Not only bears should be watched out for, but also larger amounts of water have fallen down to the valley many a time. Such an incident happened once during an archaeological excavation near Piatra Neamt. The huge floods, which forced the scientific team to interrupt their excavations, can be described in retrospect as a favorable coincidence, since they brought to light one of the oldest sandstone figures, named after the place where it was found, the Venus of Piatra Neamt. Its age is estimated at about 17,000 years. Although there was an archaeological museum in the place, the sculpture was taken 368 km away, to the south of the country.

In its first edition, CURRENT dedicates itself to porosity in – and of, the city, in so naming potential gaps in urban planning as well as gaps in the collective consciousness. This blog accompanies the ideas, thoughts and sketches of all participants while exploring the meanings, interpretations and associations of porosity as a concept.

Cities are in motion. They are in constant flux. Streetscapes ever changing their facades, momentarily generating anew while being torn down in the next. The urban–squares, streets and houses are intensively used, revived and negotiated–they are the containers of our everyday lives. The claim for a complete, or finished city, remaining perpetually unfulfilled.

CURRENT uses the city of Stuttgart as a model to visualize the present. Here, large-scale construction projects depict future scenarios, with the promise of an ideal and completed city. Gaps, wastelands, empty spaces, the unplanned, the fragile, the provisional or even the ruinous, are perceived as obstacles to their myths, because they imply the unfinished. Crises, however, disrupt the once considered, straightforward plan. Uncertainty encourages eventualities, that call for a constructive approach to the unplanned, demanding cohesion more than ever.

Art has the potential for providing the new and critical perceptions of the existing, the everyday and the self-evident. Art deliberately introduces new elements into space, either by making connections or by fostering conflict in the reflection of the every day. A distance to the concrete planning disciplines–the imaginary, as a gap–is necessary for the planning and development of the city.

This blog is the digital sketchbook, for publishing the interpretations and associations of the participating artists and partners, providing the theoretical, speculative or academic aspects behind the idea, or respectively the concept of porous space.

Recognizing the urban as porous, as means of productively engaging with the unplanned and the permeable–within the continually incomplete city.