Statt Sofa
Closing the Gap between the Urban and the Domestic in Friedrichshain, Berlin
J.C.M. van Westing (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
S.M. Witteman (TU Delft - Public Building and Housing Design)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Society is getting more inclusive by the day. Both in terms of race as well as gender, sexuality, religion and so on. This trend of inclusion should find physical correspondence in the design of public spaces that are more accessible to a wider audience with different lifestyles and cultures. The studio of Public Building offered a platform to dive deeper into this subject and to create a prototype to facilitate this important trend. By designing a public condenser people will be brought together that may normally not have crossed paths with each other.
These public buildings are important to the neighborhood and even the whole city as they can become the heart of communities. A safe space where people of all ages can go to and meet each other, learn from each other, and play with each other. A building that will regenerate its neighborhood and the social life of its inhabitants. Without such buildings these interactions between citizens would be greatly inhibited.
The building uses a form of Commons as a way of creating a building that is more inclusive for people, moments, and cultures. It will be a way to lower social thresholds and bring the private and the urban closer to each other.
The problem of the scale gap between private space and the urban surroundings is not one specifically bound to Friedrichshain or even Berlin. In almost every big city you can find the same problem. With this graduation project a solution has emerged that can either solve or soften this problem with the use of a public building. In this way the project could be used as either a baseline or a reference to projects in other cities dealing with the same problem.