Open Architecture: An Immigrant Perspective from Kreuzberg, Berlin 

Join the History of Art & Architecture Department and the Initiative on Cities to welcome Esra Akcan, Associate Professor of Architecture and the Director of the Institute for European Studies at Cornell University.

Professor Akcan will examine different inclinations towards open architecture (or the  lack thereof) during the urban renewal of Berlin’s immigrant neighborhood. She defines  “open architecture” as the translation of a new ethics of hospitality into the design process. By giving voice not only to the established and understudied architects who were invited to build public housing here, but also to noncitizen residents through oral history and storytelling, the overarching theme of noncitizen rights to the city allows for a joint discussion of the history of twentieth-century public housing, participatory, postmodernist and poststructuralist architectural debates, and the contradictory relation between international immigration laws and housing