Urban Stage: Commons Cosmodrome
The first activation of the new rooftop terrace as an open stage for art, neighbourhood projects and collective experimentation.
2024
The Urban Stage has been an ongoing spatial and programmatic experiment at ZK/U since 2021. Across four consecutive iterations, it has developed in parallel with the transformation of the building: from a temporary, scaled-down version of the future rooftop terrace on the forecourt, through the first activation of the new roof, to a permanently expanding infrastructure for artistic production, neighbourhood encounters and collective assemblies. The Urban Stage is not conceived as a finished piece of architecture, but as a living lab that is continuously developed through use, experimentation and collective appropriation. Artists, designers, urban researchers, local initiatives and neighbours test new forms of gathering, climate adaptation, urban ecology and public cultural production here. Each phase draws on the experiences, materials and relationships of the previous one and translates them into a new spatial constellation: Construction Explained, Commons Cosmodrome, The View and Assembly thus mark four moments within an open-ended process of transformation.
In 2024, the Urban Stage moved from the forecourt onto the newly constructed rooftop. Under the title Commons Cosmodrome, it became part of the first collective re-entry into the expanded ZK/U building: a place from which existing relationships, practices and ideas could take off again under changed spatial conditions.
The name describes the roof as both a shared resource and a launch site—a platform for testing how the new spaces of ZK/U could be inhabited collectively. During the reopening programme in September 2024, artistic projects, neighbourhood initiatives and long-standing ZK/U formats returned to the building and encountered one another within its new architecture. The rooftop served as an experimental stage within this process: neither a conventional venue nor a finished terrace, but a provisional landscape for gathering, working, presenting and observing.
A modular system of steel boxes formed five seating islands that could be rearranged for different situations. Community flags, workshops and artistic interventions activated the roof, while the ZK/U Werkschau brought together artistic positions connected to the institution and its transformation. ClimART explored relationships between art, climate and urban ecology, and programmes with Kollektiv Untergang, the Berliner Fahrradmarkt and LUUM connected cultural production with music, mobility and neighbourhood-based practices.
Scene Design and production: Miodrag Kuč, ZK/U
Architecture and construction: Jan Körbes, reFUNC; Finn Schumacher; Daniel
Programming: Kollektiv Untergang, Berliner Fahrradmarkt, ZK/U Werkschau, LUUM
Selected projects: ClimART, Commons Cosmodrome, Berlin Art Week 2024, opening workshops and ZK/U Werkschau