Slide Show
Cities in motion displayed at Goethe
Fayza Haq
A photographic slide show was conducted for two days at the Goethe Institut. This was arranged by Claudia Riemke, a visiting architect, and was called Cities in motion. Riemke explained that it was a simultaneous presentation of city development in Berlin and Dhaka. She said that it was about living conditions in the two cities, especially in neighbourhood areas. They presented details, environment situations where we have our daily routine. 'Often these are only subconsciously perceived. This has been done in cooperation with the Department of Architecture of the University of Asia Pacific (UAP). We focus on architecture and town planning as well,' said Riemke.Riemke is very familiar with the Dhanmondi area, which has been focused on. This is her fifth visit to Dhaka. She came in 2000 as a freelance architect working with Saiful Huq. Then she prepared an exhibition on architecture with Goethe Institut and again for the Design and Technology Centre (DTC) in Banani. Riemke said that the people here are not familiar with the daily routine of Berlin and Dhaka and vice versa as Berlin and Dhaka are far apart. She wanted to show the similarities and the differences, in matters such as dealing with household garbage and how people spend their leisure hours. 'What we know in Berlin about Bangladesh is very little. We have concepts of the flood, famine and poverty and not necessarily anything more than that. In Bangladesh when you talk of Berlin, people think of the Reichtad, the German parliament building.' Asked if she had to spend a lot of time, money and energy doing the project, Riemke said that it took two years, and she needed support of the Goethe Insititut. She did the documentary work in Berlin on her own and is here with eight students of UAP, Dept. of Architecture. The students in Dhaka took the Bangladeshi pictures and they were the result of a workshop. They had been guided and prepared by Riemke. Armaan Chowdhury and Nurur Rahman Khan helped her, in turn, in her choice of students. 'People in major cities relate to an inestimable number and variety of impressions of the urban environment. As we move through our neighbourhoods, organising our daily routines and living our everyday lives, we are using/using up/misusing the city/along the way a lot of different impressions result from our environment, both positive and negative, which have an effect on us,' said Riemke. 'One of the purposes of the project is to encourage confrontations with the city environment, which we simply accept without actively perceiving. This process of moving through cities will produce a range of sensations, from harmony to destruction, emptiness to congestion, amusement to sadness, creativity and neglect. 'By simultaneously documenting the daily routines of people in major cities on different continents, this project will also examine the relations between people and cities in a wider, global context. In some ways the impressions one gets from the public spaces of Berlin are unique, yet this project will show that they are also comparable to those of Dhaka, ' Riemke added This exhibition will be on the Internet until April 2005.
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