Nondisciplinary

Urban Practice is often carried out within a field that seemingly does not exist, seen by some but not by all. Thus descriptions of the practice have long been characterized by lengthy enumerations of disciplines within whose interstices the practitioners situate themselves. The work is done between the fields of architecture, urban development, art, the social, and education. Since all these terms are linked to large institutional formalizations (ministries, schools, museums, universities, planning departments, professional chambers, etc.), it is all the more difficult to construct new connections that can also be understood by the players involved within the respective disciplines and be connected to their own practice.
Why the ‘no’ and the refusal to associate Urban Practice with specific disciplines? Embedded in this refusal is the desire, but also the necessity, not only to transgress the boundaries of learned disciplines in order to seek exchange and new forms of knowledge between the disciplines (interdisciplinarity), but also to actively unlearn certain codes and practices of the learned disciplines in order to make space for other forms of knowledge. Linked to this is the hope that, in this way, we can find new ways to abandon old patterns and begin tackling the complex changes we need to configure.

Markus Bader is a cofounder of the group raumlaborberlin. Since 2016 he has headed the Department of Building Planning and Design at the Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning at UdK Berlin. He is a member of the Berlin Council for the Arts and is involved in the initiatives Haus der Statistik and Urbane Praxis.