I collaborated with Michael Ruglio-Misurell on this free store for Berlin's Mietskaserne tenements. The entrance form only asked for one small image, but hopefully we'll be selected and have the opportunity to revise the design (and get that 20,000 euros in funding to build). Text submission is below.
Leave usuable items you no longer want, find items you need, re-using is the most effective form of recycling! The Mietskaserne Free-Cycle provides a structure for storing and organizing unwanted functional objects for others to use for free in lieu of simply throwing them our immediately. The structured is housed within courtyard of the industiral-era Mietskaserne building typology.
Emerging from the tumultuous transition to a modern industrial economy, the Mietskasarne and the urban fabric of Berlin now must support a new, increasingly transient post-industrial demographic. My generation ebbs and flows with economic currents, across borders, labor markets, career changes and cultures. Paradoxically, a society that requires more travel than ever before also requires more consumer objects than ever. When moving or cleaning, many functional objects cannot be sold so they are inevitably thrown out or at best placed on the curve until someone takes them or they are destroyed by inclement weather. Niche second hand stores have long existed to support those left out of the consumer economy, however, many usable objects cannot be re-integrated into the economy and thus fall through the cracks. Modern design has responded with attempts at modular, disposable, and multifunctional objects with only mixed success. Further, whether the environmental question can even be answered through the design of more consumer objects is itself up for debate. The Mietskaserne Free-Cycle is design applied to informal salvaging or “dumpster diving”.
