Anagram Urbanism - Re-shuffling the City

Jellyfish Theatre London 2010 (image source)

When skimming through my notebook today, Igot reminded of a lecture by German artists Köbberling/Kaltwasserback in November at the University of the Arts Berlin. The artists werepresenting a series of projects and urban interventions in public space under the subject ofconsidering the city as anagram. Their site-specific interventions use locallysourced materials that are transformed into object-like architecturalconstructions. Characteristically, the appearance of those constructionsis imperfect and unfinished. After the destruction of the installations,objects and houses, the materials the artists have been using, disintegrate inthe materiality of the city again.
Conceptually, they understand their work asa snapshot of recycling and reshuffling a city's materials and thereforeemploying the concept of an anagram. I would argue further to not onlyunderstand their way of reshuffling materials as being analogous to theanagram, but also the fact that many of their constructions are executed in acollective effort to integrate local inhabitants in the process of building:'Beyond creating art and design objects and architecture, we initiate action'.Hence, through a participatory approach and the way in which a city's materialsget recycled and reshuffled the whole process might be termed as AnagramUrbanism: Reshuffling and recycling the built and human fabric of the city.Thinking this further, such a conceptualisation of an urbanistic approachpresupposes that the ingredients for urban change are already inscribed in thecity itself; the actions that need to be taken are excavating this pre-existingpotentials lying within the urban human and nonhuman networks and initiatingand orchestrating a process of reshuffling. The Anagram Urbanism approach wouldthen be in close dialogue with Saskia Sassen's work on OpenSource Urbanism which has been recently presented here on this blog. Discoveringthe pre-existing potentials or utilising the existing recources inscribed in the city, Anagram Urbanism then is comparable to Sassen'sunderstanding of the city as incomplete and the potential of the city to 'talkback'. And to go further, would that mean that the approach of an Anagram Urbanism wouldmake our cities more resilient, environmentally and also socially? I am not able to give the answers yet but I believe that this conceptual framework is definitively helpful to think about the present and also future state of the city and, furthermore also bears the potential of being incorporated into urban planning strategies.  
To finish this thought, here are some images ofKöbberling/Kaltwassers work, that, in case you have not recognised yet, is alsofeatured as the new header image on top of the blog.

Jellyfish Theatre London 2010 (image  source)

Hausbau Gropiusstadt Berlin 2004 (image source)

Hausbau Gropiusstadt Berlin 2004 (image source)