View of Kiel Bay from CLEAR VILLAGE on Vimeo.
Kiel is a City historically dominated by its proximity to the Baltic Sea. In fact, the City has built up on both shores of the Bay, making water and water carried trade and traffic very present in the City. On the western shore is the old market town, main infrastructural, educational and financial institutions. The Eastern shore has always been where the maritime production of all sorts took place. Therefore, the eastern shore was heavily bombed under WWII as a strategic point (u-boats where build here) for the allied forces. In the fifties, a built environment was hastely reinforced to accommodate the shipyard workers and keep the industry running in Kiel.
It is one of those estates, that we are focusing on in this analyses, and it has, to this day a connection to both water and shipyards. But also hasn’t been untouched by German demographic development over the last couple decades, creating a diachomy of ‘the old’ and ‘the new’ residents. This is typical for many European Cities of this size and very interesting to dig into!
Infrastructural and mental barriers in Kiel from CLEAR VILLAGE on Vimeo.
Insights on mental barriers and their physical reflection.
Gaarden, the district of Kiel that we work on, is less than a mile from the city centre. However, many see themselves segregated from City-life, both in terms of understanding, opportunity and connectivity.
There are many reasons for that, but it is brutally manifested by a main road and a cargo container parking spatially separating Gaarden from the view to the bay -and the City itself.
Clear Village reports from Kiel from CLEAR VILLAGE on Vimeo.
Under the header ‘what Kieler want’, we have just arrived in Gaarden, a quarter of Kiel in North Germany to make a well-being analyses of the community there and distill solutions to help the future, they wish for, underway.
