City of/Stone/City

In Berlin, building materials are constantly in circulation. They are used in construction, consumed, disposed of, replenished, renovated, imitated, and reused. The urban space appears as a structure of ongoing transformation without definitive loss: no material disappears completely—it simply changes form, location, and function. The ground itself becomes an archive. Beneath the city lie layers of time, shaped by natural processes and human intervention. Soil, sand, rock, and rubble compact into a sedimented memory of the city and can be read as traces of actions and events.
Rock, gravel, or sand—every stone is unique. No two surfaces are alike; no form repeats itself. When a stone is picked up, it initially appears as pure material. Its properties, however, do not remain stable: form, surface, and texture change through context and processing, through human action. A stone becomes a building block, a figure, or an object. Meaning arises only through attribution—as a wall, a brick, or a symbol. This raises the question: When is a stone material, and when does it become an object? Its status shifts between use and observation. The stone is positioned and placed in relation to other elements, thus becoming part of new orders. We are interested in the stone’s status: its simplicity and variability open up a space of design possibilities. It becomes a medium for observing, reading, and reinterpreting the state of the city.
In a participatory installation, materials from Berlin’s soil and rubble are provided. Participants are invited to shape their own stones from these materials. Binding agents enable the materials to be combined and reshaped. This creates a cycle of extraction, transformation, and return, in which the stone is simultaneously material, building material, souvenir, and object—and the starting point for the production of new meanings.