Mur à Pêches

Prof. Sandra Bartoli, Lecturer Nina Zerbs

In cooperation with TU Berlin, FG Gebäudelehre und Entwerfen, Prof. Silvan Linden

Guest critics: Maximilian Gutmair, Ulrich Hackl, Björn Martenson

Students: Rajaee Abugharbieh, Öznur Baskaya, Zaira Carbajal, Hamz Dar, Meltem Demirkaynak, Lina Dopfer, Laura Ellmann, Luisa Hölzl, Ivana Ivanova, Feyza Kizilkaya, Emma Kohler, Lara Metz, Lisa Moloney, Lorenz Oberhammer, Isabella Pineda, Noah Puhl, Lilli Swoboda, Roxana Wenner, Paula Zoller.

In the novel The Belly of Paris, Zola tells, among other things, of Les Halles, the large centralized market in Paris, where every morning vast amounts of fresh produce from the city’s belt of gardens was brought by endless lines of carriages, at the break of dawn. These market gardens in the periphery of Paris were specialized in the cultivation of individual products. The production of peaches for the entire city was concentrated in Montreuil, about ten kilometers east of the city center, where an extensive network of fruit walls made it possible to cultivate the frost-sensitive plants. In 1930s, the cultivation area covered around 500 hectares, today the structure of the fruit walls is still preserved on 38 hectares. The walls of the Montreuil “Murs à Pêches” are masterful structures of ecology, microclimate, and economy. For this studio we’ll focus on this compelling site by exploring the wall in various ways–the enclosure as an architectural large form, the wall as a proto-architecture, as the simplest and cheapest form of greenhouse, as a machine to create climate, as an ecological system of production, and more. The studio was organized around an initial cartographic site exploration during an excursion to Paris and Montreuil with guided visits. The architectural project and program resulted from the question of how to learn from and contribute to the Montreuil Murs à Pêches.