Fringes

With its vivid creative scene far away from metropolitan cores, the Wendland region in the middle between Hannover, Hamburg, and Berlin is establishing new ways of living and working in the periphery. The FRINGES urban design project is aiming at a spatial exploration of remarkable assets of cultural and social initiatives, craft and manufacturing economy, the cultural heritage of 100 Round Villages and a series of Country Towns, as well as the background of alternative activism since the 1970ies. A possible contribution of urban design towards creative networks is starting from a double meaning of FRINGES: as cultural and social opportunities arising from margins in one of the most remote areas of Germany, threatened by abandonment and neglect. Inventions for the creative and cultural economy and for new ideas of living in Wendland are at the core of the urban design project. Spatial visions, branding, and transformations processes address the interactions between a regional scale, a scale of small towns and villages, and architectural interventions-including new housing and working models, cultural and productive spaces, and new mobility.