The students exchange and dialogue project "Grenzgeografien" initiated by the Universität der Künste Berlin UDK (Art Academy) wants to encourage prospective architects, town planners as well as external university experts from Germany, Israel and Palestine to develop new visions together for a peaceful future in Jerusalem. The UDK, headed by Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Peter Bayerer and in partnership with the Allianz Kulturstiftung, together with the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem and the International Peace and Cooperation Centre IPCC, East Jerusalem, has organised three joint work and design workshops, which are devoted to the problems of day-to-day living together in Berlin or its environs and East Jerusalem. The background to this trilateral dialogue is the city of Jerusalem which has been shaped by the cultural exchange between Western Europe and the Islamic world. Although nominally united since 1967, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is engraved in everyday life in the city.

As regards content, the workshops which are organised by the various project partners and are held on location revolve around the role of town-planners and architects with regard to designing a peaceful environment. At the same time the focus is not least upon the development of definitely realisable models and future strategies.While in the two Jerusalem workshops it concerns more the documentation and visualising of conflict patterns and in another step the development of alternative planning tools, the trilateral group of students in Berlin will examine two prototypical locations, which are characterised by conflicts in the everyday life of two different population groups: the Berlin environs and the Oder/Neisse border region.

Through the "Grenzgeografien" project the Berlin students of architecture can bring important experience from the German-German reunification process to bear in the work procedure. Consequently they are not only mediators between Israelis and Palestinians of their own age but make the beginning of an important dialogue even possible.Architect and project coordinator Philipp Misselwitz explains the motivations and difficulties of the project in an interview.

More information about the process and the results of the workshops can be found here.

Project partner: Universität der Künste Berlin UDK, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, JerusalemInternational Peace and Cooperation Centre IPCC, East Jerusalem, Project manager: Philipp Misselwitz, MA (Cantab) AA Dipl. / E-Mail: philmisselwitz@aol.com