Book review of Polylemma by Ian Witte

Küchenmonument. (Photo: raumlabor)
When I was little, I loved to dream about utopia. Futuristic cities with flying cars and green skyscrapers sparked my imagination. I wasn't alone; many people share similar visions, and even AI-generated images reflect this ideal when given the sole word ‘utopia’.

Utopia, according to AI (generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E model)
However, during my time at university, I began to question this concept. Utopia is just an idea – a vision of perfection that varies for everyone. But, if it is so subjective, then why is this idea of utopia as a high-tech city so overrepresented in society?
I think it's rooted in our daily lives, where we’re stuck in routines, craving efficiency to ease our stress. But if perfection were achieved, does it mean the world is finished? Don’t the new developments cause for new problems? Wouldn’t it be extremely boring if our world has been created to be perfect, for us, by some people who think they know what perfection means, with no space for us to shape it to our heart’s content?
Now that I’m surrounded by critical thinkers, I can see how this idea of utopia is starting to fall apart. Books like Polylemma highlight the beauty of imperfections and the value of shaping public spaces through bottom-up initiatives.
Polylemma is just like a dilemma – a complex issue – but then with many more alternatives to choose from. The book shows how the raumlabor initiative deals with these polylemmas in the public space. raumlabor is German for ‘space laboratory’. It is a non-profit initiative based in Berlin, consisting of urbanists, architects, artists, and designers who are actually not really urbanists, architects, artists, and designers. Their aim is to spread the ‘raumlabor practice’ around the world – in the sense where practice has a dual definition: practice as in ‘performing something’ and practice as in ‘learning and improving’, just as happens in a laboratory. Their projects are usually temporary interventions in the public space that aim to leverage long-term change. Through art, they aim to connect people in their local environment, and acknowledge that they cannot understand the space as those local residents do. It is up for the locals to maintain the change which raumlabor has leveraged.

People building together on the Making Futures project in Palermo. (Photo: Lena Giovanazzi)
Essentially, the book is a collection of texts and photos of how raumlabor’s projects have played out over the years. They have their own website too (www.raumlabor.net), which I’d highly recommend checking if you don’t have the opportunity to read the book. However, the book itself is shaped in a clever way that far exceeds a mere portfolio of the initiatives’ work and makes it so rewarding to read. It is an adventure; a discovery; something you should explore for yourself. Curious? Stop reading this review right now and pick up the book with your own hands!
Half of the power of this book lies in its design. In the beginning, the authors explain how it is designed like a city: there is no start; there is no end. You can pick up the book and leaf through – reading some snippets here and there, just like you can observe a city by flying over it in Google Earth. You can also ‘go out and take a walk through the streets’ to learn more about the stories told from a human perspective.
The more I read, the more I understood that this metaphor of ‘the book as a city’ runs much deeper than I initially thought it would. The pages have a very disorganized layout. There are no chapters; there is no consistent font; pages are made of various kinds of paper. Sometimes there is half a blank page, while there is one tiny photo cramped into the corner of that blank page. There is a poem in French. There is also a Tripadvisor review in Swedish. Sometimes there are a series of drawings filling up several pages in a row, reminding me of my childhood drawings, while I cannot understand how that adds to the stories told. Sometimes there are these things called ‘bookwalks’, where members of the raumlabor initiative are talking to one another, like a transcript of an interview. Sometimes they talk about serious practices of place-making. And sometimes they are ordering a kebab. No thought-provoking story is told there. The dialogue only consists of ordering a kebab.
The point I am trying to make here, is that the book’s design is so playful and inept. Top-down, governmental agencies would never pull anything like this off. The book does not read like there is an all-knowing agency selling you something. It is you, the reader, who ventures through the city’s streets and comes across all these random events of people talking, reviews being posted, people ordering kebabs, and a submarine made of scrap sailing by. You, the reader, collect all these stories that are told by the city itself, and by the people that make up this city. That is what makes this book so imperfect. That is what makes this book so beautiful.

Kunsthaus Kalk aims to create an inclusive art centre in Köln for artists with and without special needs. (Photo: Astrid Piethan)
Although the book is fantastic at displaying how well raumlabor’s projects work at bringing people together and changing the public space, it is also elaborately discussed that there is not always success. Their rebellious architecture sometimes stumbles upon bottom-down rules and legislations. An example is that they were not allowed to name one of their projects ‘floating university’, because they are not legally established as a university. Instead, they named it ‘floating university’, to show that collective learning remains the essential part of the project. However, as the one law was bypassed, the team faced another law. An outdated environmental law stated that the site of the floating university had to be vacated to make way for nature development, even though the project contributed to a thriving ecosystem. This teaches us that bottom-up is never the only way to achieve change in our society. It still goes hand in hand with policies and politics.

The Floating University project in Tempelhof, Berlin. (Photo: Alexander Stumm)
Because I am writing a review for this book, I have read it from the first to the last page, unlike what the authors recommended. It left me to wonder – a book without a start and without a finish – how does it end? What do the last few pages look like? As it turns out, there is no end. It is a cycle. The book starts where it ended. It looks into the past, to the humble beginnings of raumlabor, and, for the first time, shows us the photos from their office. The last remaining pages are filled with page-sized photos from one of their projects, involving large pillows suspended in the air above a public space. It brings us back to the dreams of a bright future – the dream of a utopia. Because utopia starts with a dream – one we all aim to realize. raumlabor shows us that utopia is not necessarily limited to this dream. It lies in the process of achieving this dream. Stumbling over all these imperfections, while creating something fun, something quirky, ugly, artistic, or inciting. Perhaps most importantly, achieving this dream together with all the people that make it grow, live, and eventually die, before starting all over again. There is a quote on the back cover of someone who discovered precisely this.
“Fifteen years ago, I dreamt of utopia. Then I met raumlabor, and they taught me how to live inside of it”.

Putting space in a new perspective for the Spacebusters project in St. Louis. (Photo: Kevin McElvaney)
Polylemma is written bij the Raumlabor initiative and published by JOVIS Verlag under the ISBN 978-3-86859-738-7
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