Open-air pools are unique places in the city, where people of extremely different backgrounds and realities of life meet: they are sites of togetherness, confrontation and exchange, all at the same time. Open-air pools allow for the social and cultural diversity of the city to happen, establishing connections between the heavily segregated and segmented bubbles of everyday urban life and its inhabitants. Why, we ask, can an open-air pool only have this role during the summer? Why are these meeting places forgotten and unused for the major part of year?
We would like to initiate the discussion about potential alternating uses of the open-air pool spaces!
Together with various actors from politics and urban planning, the neighborhood and social initiatives, the Berliner Bäderbetriebe and visitors of the open-air pools, we want to jointly examine the suitability of open-air pools as an urban resource that is used all year round: What kind of activities might make these spaces an all-year meeting point? Which urban publics might need these spaces in the autumn, winter and spring months? Might there be new and perhaps unconventional ways to use these spaces that respond to the general lack of public space in the city of Berlin?
Open-air pools are unique places in the city, where people of extremely different backgrounds and realities of life meet: they are sites of togetherness, confrontation and exchange, all at the same time. Open-air pools allow for the social and cultural diversity of the city to happen, establishing connections between the heavily segregated and segmented bubbles of everyday urban life and its inhabitants. Why, we ask, can an open-air pool only have this role during the summer? Why are these meeting places forgotten and unused for the major part of year?
We would like to initiate the discussion about potential alternating uses of the open-air pool spaces!
Together with various actors from politics and urban planning, the neighborhood and social initiatives, the Berliner Bäderbetriebe and visitors of the open-air pools, we want to jointly examine the suitability of open-air pools as an urban resource that is used all year round: What kind of activities might make these spaces an all-year meeting point? Which urban publics might need these spaces in the autumn, winter and spring months? Might there be new and perhaps unconventional ways to use these spaces that respond to the general lack of public space in the city of Berlin?