Problem statement
Friendrichshain consists of variety of contrast, diversity, and multiplicity regarding architecture, functions, gentrification, atmospheres, users, and cultures. This multiplicity gives a unique quality to the area. Berlin has a history of migration and has been experiencing a high refugee inflow in recent years. After 2015’s refugee crisis in Berlin and Germany, according to the Berlin Senate in April 2022 there was another influx of around 60 thousand Ukrainian refugees (Berlin.de, 2022). Consequently, society have faced social and academic integration challenges. Moreover, data from 2018 shows, about 126,650 residents (44%) in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg have migration backgrounds (Bettina, 2020). Therefore, this study aims to investigate to what extend architecture of a public condenser can contribute to sociocultural integration.

The intent of this project is to generate a central and accessible place to escape from daily rush of live amidst the diverse and busy district. A refuge to bring refugees, migrants, and locals together for integration with a main function of sports/event hall for the whole community. Workshop spaces to explore and improve skills by producing art, crafts, a library to study languages. To integrate with the local culture and people by cultural performances, music/dance/theater performances and classes, by cooking together, dining together, gardening, studying together, having food markets as connection and job opportunity. In addition, practical functions such as legal help, language lessons and labor market integration for migrants and refugees will be provided by locals. Not to forget, places of worship and meditation or yoga.

Importance
Why this is important for the district is related to the theme of the commons. This project intent to bring displaced people together with locals through interaction by intellectual, cultural, religious and food related activities. Another common, is the aspect of a refuge. All people, either flying from unsafe areas, periods or from daily life and the hustle and bustle of the city are in search of a nice place to meet, study, read, attend a cultural/musical performance, or get in touch with new cultures and food. Therefore, an inclusive building will be realized since refugees who are after arriving (temporarily) part of the community and migrants living mainly in Kreuzberg are included. The aspect of flexibility and multifunction spaces needs to be taken into consideration, since the needs will change based on the influx of people and their needs.

Approach and Methods
This research will be conducted by gathering quantitative and theoretical information by means of literature research. To gain insight into the numbers of refugees and migrants in the district and in Berlin, political quantitative data will be examined. By researching through designing the different functions usability should be tested and lead the research by answering the suitability of certain functions for integration. By testing through design strategies and investigating case studies, existing and planned projects can be questioned. Case studies as Absalon Community Centre in Copenhagen and the Integration Hub by Robert Bosch Stiftung will be investigated (Arcgency, 2015, Integration Hub, n.d.). Research will be conducted on displacement and architecture by investigation the book by Andrew Herscher: Displacements, Architecture and Refugee (Herscher & Fast, 2017)

Research Aim
Eventually, by researching opportunities for architecture to create this center for the commons, inclusivity, diversity, and the sense of belonging will be investigated and can be adapted into different projects within the discipline. This research can contribute to the discipline at large since sociocultural challenges of integration and migration is a worldwide issue and therefore findings can be adapted to several multicultural cities elsewhere especially in Europe with similar situations of multiplicity in society.

An architect should not only design spaces and functions, but he or she can bring architecture to another level whereby the architecture itself can influence the environment and their people, such as health conditions, (safety) feelings, behaviour and productivity. Within the contemporary architecture, buildings are mostly designed for our visuals. “We have allowed two of our sensory domains— sight and sound—to dominate our design imagination. In fact, when it comes to the culture of architecture and design, we create and produce almost exclusively for one sense—the visual.” (Mau, 2018, p. 20). Our experience of space, as of anything else, is much more multisensory than most people realize. (Spence, 2020). Designing in a way that all senses will be touched gives the opportunity to influence human well-being and health-conditions, and create a community out of all the individuals. “Environmental multisensory stimulation can potentially affect us at the social, emotional, and cognitive levels.” (Spence, 2020).

A public condenser, a place for all people, no matter which culture, age, gender and interests, is a perfect place to improve people’s well-being and the health of the city. Stimulating people to improve their well-being by creating certain ‘Atmospheres’ - places that you can read, becoming involved with and that manages to move people. (Zumthor, 2006). – using multisensory design techniques. “The quality of a space or place is not merely a visual perceptual quality as is usually assumed. The judgement of environmental character is a complex multi-sensory fusion of countless factors, which are immediately and synthetically grasped as an overall atmosphere, feeling, mood or ambiance.” (Pallasmaa, 2014).
The main question within this research is: ‘How to create atmospheres based on multisensory design, that stimulate people to improve their well-being, physically and mentally?

The goal of this research is to investigate and experience how Atmospheres – that stimulates people to improve their well-being (physically and mentally) with interactive experiences - should be designed, based on touching all human senses in a sustainable, hybrid and resilient way.

This design of a public condenser could be a prototype. The concepts of how to create atmospheres that stimulate people improving their well-being using multisensory design can contribute to the larger architectural disciple. The techniques and arguments of this project can be used in other designs as well.

The importance of this project is to make a creative center in Berlin, Germany that supports all forms of creative expression. A Potluck Creative Center will add space for creative ambitions and give communal enjoyment (value), to the neighborhood. A condenser for all informal creative forms, where persons who practice different forms can teach, learn, and display. Giving a platform for informal art to be in an experimental grey zone where it can be measured, yet uncontrolled between spatial barriers (formal-enclosed and informal-exposed).

The scope of my project is to create a framework to base a creative module form. The design will create a prototype using a module that can be used in other projects to result in structured informal learning. Creating a program that can combine and transform how different creative forms are viewed on a broader scale in the competence level of professions. Praising how creative forms are being embraced through learning may solve some of the social and ecological imbalances within a neighborhood, that are overlooked.

Through embracing the commons this project aims to create prototypes of individual free-thinking spaces and programs while creating a unique multi-functional horizontally hybrid architecture form that can be used for inspiration. This architectural design is to showcase that massing forms should embrace special features based on location to create a successful site addition, while the module/prototype can allow the program, and interior design to embrace flexibility. Permitting for program transformation for future use [adaptability and sustainability].

This project takes place in Friedrichshain, Berlin, Germany and presents the design of a Public Condenser along the Straße der Pariser Kommune named ’Bau(m) Berlin’. The project is part of the Public Building Graduation Studio and looks into the topic of designing a ’new urban lounge and commons’ through the process of Research by Design.

Through field research and urban analysis, three issues came to the forth in the Friedrichshain area; A disconnection between residents, a missing framework for social (re-)integration and low quality green space. These issues consequently led to choosing the project site along the Straße der Pariser Kommune and forming the following research question:

”What if there could be an architecture that pushes interaction so that the social gap between people could be bridged whilst functioning as
a platform that helps people to (re-) enter society?”

In order to tackle the pre-described issues, the project takes the notion of ’building’ and dissects it into ’Building the Future Commons’, ’Building Connections’ and ’Building Things’. Together they describe and result into the project Bau(m). The ’m’ in Bau(m) entails the notion and concept of Multiplicity, e.i. the idea that a thing, in this case a public building, can be used in multiple ways, for various programmatic functions, throughout time. For me, this meant seeing architecture as a framework that allows for adaptable use of a building.

Consequently, the building is designed as a pavilion within the park stretching along the Straße der Pariser Kommune and has one big roof supported by a grid structure column repetition made from timber. The columns are bended so that together, they form an arch-shaped pattern. By seeing the building as part of the park, the park is equally redesigned into a park of higher quality with an urban route that stretches through the building and connects the Ostbahnhof train station with the Karl-Marx-Allee further North.

The main function of the building is a workshop space for various crafts, amongst which furniture making, as it uses the method of making as a way of bringing people together and getting those in need back on into society. This workshop space stretches into the basement and thus forms the substructure of an urban square that exists in front of the building.

My project starts from the city Berlin. After visiting the site in Friedrichshain, I found that people who lived there were not satisfied with the food-eating space nearby throughout my interviews. They said that even though there were some restaurants, the community was lack of diverse food space, and they were willing to go to the West Berlin for food. To check if they were right, I made a food mapping of the community. I found that there are a few restaurants and supermarkets there, but not too many. And there was just one flexible exterior street market nearby, so basically they were right. Based on this, designing a food-eating space for the community came into my mind.
To follow up on the locals’ idea, I went to the west of Berlin and found many diverse food-related activities. There are not just many restaurants in the West, but also many street markets, and an interesting Prinzessinnengarten where people can farm, make and cook inside. At the time, based on the topic of our project “Public Condenser”, I think if I condense many kinds of food-related activities(farming, making, shopping, and eating) into one building, it will provide more opportunities for people to encounter, which also suits my understanding towards the word “Common”, where people can make something together, and participate into activities constantly. Then food could be a good medium to connect people in Berlin from different backgrounds. Furthermore, facing the trend that eating become more private and people do not want to go out for food and feel lonely, a food condenser can take people out and solve these issues very well. From the food mapping, I consider the REWE supermarket as the best location to build. Because it sits in the street full of restaurants, they can work well together economically. And the site is also near the Warschauer Straße station, so it is accessible for the locals and outsiders. Finally, the original supermarket will be turned down, and a better new flexible market space will show up in the new building.
After making sure of my topic about food, I divided the program into four parts, from farming, making, and shopping to eating. In the farming part, people can grow some vegetables, ingredients, and some plants in the balcony, rooftop garden, or indoor area. In the making part, people can cook the food they pick up from the farming part in the shared kitchen, chefs can learn cooking from the culinary school, and chefs can explore their recipes in the food laboratory, citizens can see the food exhibition, they can also order the food in the kitchen that is already cooked by the chefs. In the shopping part, people can shop, eat, and socialize in a flexible market space, including a long indoor market, some eating space, and relaxed space. They can also listen to lectures about food culture in the hall. In the eating part, people can enjoy a big food square. They can also order in two big round-shaped food bars, and find food in some open restaurants. To condense these multiple food-related spaces in one building, I worked out a prototype, I call it “Vertical Food Forest”, which will be situated at a specific site and create various food experiences as an interesting and complicated system.

The Binckhorst in The Hague is one of the most promising development areas of The Netherlands. Over the next years, it will continue to develop into a high density mixed-use area. Among the tabula-rasa state of Binckhorst, a Public Building will be placed in the form of a music venue. Between the orthogonal high-rise blocks, a key-project will set the tone for the cultural development in the area.

This development will be defined in a classical sense. Research shows that classical music has seen an uprising with the evolution of the internet and specifically, streaming services (Roberts, 2020) democratizing classical music through mass accessibility and distribution. However, the live classical music scene has always strongly followed formal tradition, aswell as its corresponding buildings. Thus, there is too little attention for the more experimental and modernistic development of classical music architecture. This project aims to focus on manifesting this internet-oriented, more dynamic, and informal side of classical music.

This leads to the main question:
How can dynamic re-iteration of concert hall designs modernise the audience experience of the live contemporary music scene?

This question is answered through a series of research subjects; Object, Movement and Experience. The first architectural subject is researched through morpho-typological analysis of concert hall precedents, based on J.N.L. Durand and Aldo Rossi. Then, the second and third subjects are analysed by looking through the lens of praxeology and phenomenology, using theories of Henri Lefebvre and Merleau-Ponty. The fruits of these analyses result in a toolbox of design elements that will be used for the creation of a building typology that fits this new development in a long-lasting formal culture. The new project is to introduce dynamism, multiplicity and multifunctionality to the historical prototype, to allow for stimulation of the modernistic classical music experience.