These series of activities and design processes addressed the challenge of transforming the ethnically conflictual and divided Famagusta into a multi-fragmented city.
By Markus Bader
The Hands-on Famagusta project is built on an interactive digital interface, (www.handsonfamagusta.org), roundtable workshops, and a transportable model of the city. The digital interface is an interactive web platform which hosts a smart archive that advocates the commons of a unified Famagusta by introducing a playful mode of designerly knowledge exchange. It introduces reconciliation modes deep into potential urban reconstruction processes. The ad-hoc technologies of the Hands-on Famagusta project are: roundtables, isometric drawings of a severely fragmented city, a transportable city model, a cardboard stencil with cut-outs of an action pigeon-the project’s logo and stickers of strategies that introduce the urban commons.
The commoning processes started at a round table in Nicosia’s buffer zone were followed by activities designed by students of the University of Cyprus in the streets of Nicosia and Famagusta using graffiti stencil and urban games. These series of activities and design processes addressed the challenge of transforming the ethnically conflictual and divided Famagusta into a multi-fragmented city.
Project by Andrea Hofmann, Anna Kokalanova, Axel Timm, Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius, Christof Mayer, Flroian Stirnemann, Francesco Appuzzo, Frauke Gerstenberg, Jan Liesegang, Juan Chacon, and Rosario Talevi.
MARKUS BADER
Markus Bader is co-founder of Raumlabor Berlin, which focuses on urban strategies and procedural urban development, as well as curatorial and spatial installation work on the intersections of art and the city of Berlin.
