Identifying a need for increased social interactions in the neighborhood of Ydre-Nørrebro in Copenhagen, this design project aims to densify social interactions through the architectural design of a Public Condenser. This typology - a public building with a focus on hybridity, multiplicity, sustainability, healthiness and resilience - in its program facilitates the need of residents to extend the range of their domestic environment, to feel at home in public space. The keyword here is 'domestication'. Being able to domesticate a public space, temporarily inhabiting it, allows users to consider a greater part of the city their home. By creating an atlas of functions that respond to the needs of the site area's residents, a diverse and inclusive building program is determined. This functional atlas is spatially structured in a way that encourages unexpected encounters, and juxtaposes intimate interior spaces with open-plan flexible spaces.
The building design through its inside-out approach reimagines the techno-optimistic high-tech architecture of the 1980s from a more sustainable and social perspective. A display of building functions and movement projects and promotes the building's publicity and creates an understanding in how it functions, socially and technically. Building services are presented as active 'organs' - in this project called 'plug-ins' - that support the interior spaces. The plug-ins facilitate rational movement on the outside of the building by a lateral gallery and elevators to move vertically in the building. Additionally, they facilitate in the climate system of the interior spaces. By acting as a heat buffer, a energy generator and an air extractor, the plugins take up an active role in the passive strategies of the interior climate system.

This thesis researches the effects that politics can have on architecture. As a field of research, former East Germany is chosen. Here, political powers influenced heavily what was being built. This relationship is researched through the life of East Germany's most prominent architect: Hermann Henselmann. He changed his architectural course quite drastically in the early 50s, going from modernism, to socialist realism and back to modernism. By looking at his publications and the historic developments that lead to two prominent buildings designed by him, it is researched what effect the politics of the central socialist government had on his designs. It turns out that the influence and power of the state was enormous, and that Henselmann could only build so much because of his talent of finding his way around these political constraints and still applying his design talent within these boundaries.