Wounded urban landscapes: violence, everyday life and more-than-human urbanism in two Cologne mounds.

Mounds are formed by piling up discarded materials. They are an unintended consequence of various human activities. Often involving destruction or waste accumulation, they are
common in urban environments. Urban mounds can be viewed as material archives. They incorporate stories about the social power relations and ecological processes that shaped them. Daniel's project focuses on two such mounds in Cologne: the Aachener Berg and the Kalkberg. The former is made of war rubble, while the latter is an industrial landfill site. Both have undergone successive phases of planned and spontaneous transformation. While the Aachener Berg has been reshaped into a park with open lawns and woodlands, the Kalkberg was the site of a failed construction project and remains an inaccessible wasteland supporting uncontrolled, spontaneous life. The first aim of the project is to reveal the various forms of violence that resulted in the formation of the mounds, ranging from war bombing to the consequences of capitalist production, pollution and unequal urban planning. The second aim is to address the impact of the two mounds on everyday urban life and to reveal the challenges involved in reclaiming damaged landscapes as urban commons. The final aim of the project is to illustrate how ecological processes reshape the mounds, and provide insight into the political and ecological significance of post-conflict and postindustrial urban green spaces.