Close-up: Südstadt – new perspectives on our research area

The opening of the exhibition ‘Close-up: Südstadt’ on 9 January 2026 at the GEDOK Artists' Forum was a resounding success. On display were the works of eight master's students of regional science/spatial planning from the Institute of Regional Science. The budding urban researchers created their individual exploration logbooks as part of the seminar ‘Sensing Space: Exploration and Analysis of Urban Space’ in the winter semester 25/26. In these logbooks, they explore Karlsruhe's Südstadt from perspectives that playfully create access to emotional knowledge and make the invisible visible. The logbooks were displayed as part of the exhibition. Interest was high: over 50 people attended the opening night and, after a short speech by Elisabeth Stephan-Geißler (GEDOK) and seminar leaders Agnes Matoga and Anna-Barbara Grebhahn (IfR), visitors immersed themselves in completely new perspectives on Karlsruhe's Südstadt district. The central theme of the logbooks is perception, and student explorations of the senses of hearing, smell and touch were on display. In addition, individually designed profiles of different animal and plant species were on display, as the students focused on non-human city dwellers as part of the BioBlitz campaign (https://www.mensch-und-technik.kit.edu/bioblitz.php). The topic of critical mapping also found its place in the seminar, with the exhibition showing maps created by the students themselves, which made the usually invisible visible. As part of the interactive exhibition, small surveys were also conducted, allowing all visitors to contribute their personal knowledge of the city to data sets on the topics of street furniture, visual communication, youth spaces and traffic safety in the southern part of the city. Anyone who felt like exploring on their own afterwards was allowed to take an exploration toolkit in the form of a mini-zine at the entrance. After the exhibition has ended, the exploration toolkits will still be available at the Institute for Regional Science. If you are interested, please contact us at hallo ∂does-not-exist.ifr kit edu. We are delighted with this successful collaboration between the Karlsruhe GEDOK Artists' Forum and the Institute for Regional Science at the interface of design, urban research, art and culture. We would like to thank all exhibition visitors for their interest and the students for the exciting exhibition content.

Anna-Barbara Grebhahn and Agnes Matoga, lecturers in the seminar ‘Sensing Space: Exploration and Analysis of Urban Space’