Working and Living in the City of KnowledgeA Berlage Institute project in collaboration with Steelcase Edited by Dietmar Leyk Steelcase WorkSpace Futures

Berlage Institute | Steelcase WorkSpace Futures

Contents Preface, Vedran Mimica Amplifying weak signals. The Changing Role of the Workplace, Catherine Gall and Nicolas de Benoist Hybrid urban work / life models for an information society, Dietmar Leyk The Utopian, the Real, the Generic, and the Specific. Representation of Knowledge Work, Dietmar Leyk Berlin Data Urban Lobby Urban Projects Bars, Islands, Matrix, Net, Points, Strip I, Strip II, Mind Spaces Bridge Space, Distributive Space, Garden Space, Performative Space, Phantom Space Conversations Dietmar Leyk in conversation with Elia Zenghelis, Catherine Gall, Nicolas de Benoist, and Roman Wagner Afterthoughts Excerpt from a debate during the Green Light Reviews at the Berlage Institute Glossary Contributors Bibliography Acknowledgements Illustration credits Colophon 16 17 18 19 26 28 31 32 90

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Working and Living in the City of KnowledgeA Berlage Institute project in collaboration with Steelcase Edited by Dietmar Leyk Steelcase WorkSpace Futures

Berlage Institute | Steelcase WorkSpace Futures

16 Preface The following is the result of a postgraduate research studio conducted at the Berlage Institute during the 200910 academic year. The studio is based on the collaborative imagination between the Steelcase think tank and Dietmar Leyk, who has been conducting research at the Berlage Institute since 2005 on new metropolitan working and living conditions. Since the industrial revolution and the theoretical and political discourses of Karl Marx via Hannah Arendt to Richard Florida, the concepts of proletariat, work, labor and creative class have been discussed with regard to the duality of the human condition and its urban reflection. Framed within the contemporary discussion on distributed working conditions and the subsequent architectural and urban responses, this Berlage Institute researchbased design studio questions how the city fabric can support and represent the way people work and live together, how to counteract the suburbanization of knowledge work, and what the architectural successor of the office typology will be. In the yearlong process of exchange with Steelcase, the studio found the ideal partner for constructing hypotheses for new live-work quarters for a central site in Berlin. Readers can enjoy the theoretical and conceptual body of knowledge. Each contribution is based on different hybridized and institutional centralities of the city of Berlin in spatial, cultural, and economic terms. It is in this context, the studio explored new forms of workspace architecture for a twenty-first-century information-based economy. Vedran Mimica Director, Berlage Institute October 2010

17 Amplifying weak signals The changing role of the workplace The profound social, spatial and informational shifts that we are experiencing in life and work today have significant design implications for our work environments in the future. Today, workers are driven by independence, creativity, lifelong learning and work/life integration. They develop broad social and professional networks to enhance work/life experience. They are adept at using connective technologies that support a mixed use of virtual and face-to-face interactions at the same time. Knowledge work has clearly become more distributed, more collaborative and more result-driven. Where work gets done matters less than ever, as technology has made leaps in providing infrastructure for remote collaboration and interaction. This new approach to working, living, and innovating needs new typologies of places. The work environment, so far largely contained in the corporate building, has begun to spread. Today, the city is the office. Work enters public space, third places and homes, challenging the boundaries between private and public lives, work and free time, and leading to new questions about different cultures, practices, aspirations, and more. We are interested in understanding these emerging forces that create a new work landscape: individual office, district, campus, home, city, cloud The City of Knowledge: Enabling Connections Today, the view from a workers office can change five or more times a day as she moves from home, to office, a coffee shop, the airport, a remote co-working space in Berlin. Shes highly mobile, but the transfer of information and transitions between those spaces are anything but smooth and seamless. Post-It notes about her sons soccer game are on the fridge, her calendar is on her cell phone, and the presentation she has to share with her co-workers in India is on her laptop. Every change of space is an information juggling act. Now imagine the city of knowledge: the idea of going to work is obsolete and the need to move information quickly between spaces and devices increases ten-fold. This same woman carries small but lives large. All the information she needs for work and life can be carried in the palm of her hand, and every place she enters her living room, the airport, coffee shop supports and streamlines her transitions between modes and spaces instead of compromising or hindering them. The Post-Its from her fridge appear on her hotel room wall. Her presentation can be shared with her coworkers while she runs through the airport. Her desk at the hotel has all the same information as the one at work. How does the urban fabric support this new vision? To what extent does the design of large cities recognise and celebrate how people and organisations want to work and live today? How about tomorrow? These questions were the starting point of this exploratory research project with Dietmar Leyk and the Berlage Institute. Steelcase WorkSpace Futures Steelcase aspires to create great experiences, wherever work happens. WorkSpace Futures is a corporate research and foresight activity within Steelcase Inc. This trans-disciplinary group seeks to develop understandings of evolving issues that impact work, workers, and workplaces. Our goal is to improve the individuals experience as well as organisational performance. By observing people at work, we learn how they behave, interact with their environment, and communicate with others. We look inside the workplace and connect it to wider developments in the world in order to anticipate what might change or revolutionise work itself. Catherine Gall, Director Steelcase WorkSpace Futures Research Europe Nicolas de Benoist, Senior Researcher Steelcase WorkSpace Futures Europe October 2010

18 Hybrid work/life models for an information society What does it mean to work in a city today? Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the emergence of new circumstances, shifting values, revolutionary ideas, and major inventions have transformed the way we work, live and play. Thanks to new management principles and spatial arrangement of society, labour has become simultaneously distributed and collaborative. The public and private, collective and individual concepts that have been clearly distinguishable in the past meld together, challenging the relationship between private workspace and the public sphere. Workers become passengers travelling through an open space of constant accessibility as they expertly collaborate across international time zones. Interconnectedness on a new global scale requires workers to perform within a multitude of diverse cultural atmospheres. New work environments exist in egalitarian, multi-use agglomerations that integrate working, residential and cultural activities, which are not only interdependent, but also closely linked to the larger context of the city. Pure typologies of offices and central business districts will cease to carry the same importance as they once did. Steelcase identified pertinent design principles to consider while creating collaborative and mobile workspaces on the micro scale. Together we strongly felt there was a lack of adequate terminologies or conceptual design principles for the macro scale: the city. Working and Living in the City of Knowledge is based on the research project Metropolitan Imprints, developed by postgraduate students at the Berlage Institute Rotterdam. The participants were asked to imagine the organisation of future urban life, especially the conditions of working, in relation to other human activities by envisioning Berlin in 2030. The project comprises of a series of interrelated studies, which together give a conceptual overview of a potential future work/life quarter, the City of Knowledge. The studies forecast diverse and exciting spaces of work, life, and other activities in central Berlin. The participants investigated hybridised and institutional centralities of the city in spatial, cultural and economic terms. The result is an exploration of new forms of workspace architecture for a twenty-first century information economy. The investigations were conducted during the 2009 2010 academic year. The series of projects questions how the fabric of the city and its architecture can support and represent the way people work and live. Each participant was involved in a project addressing a specific topic like bridging domains or permeability between in- and outside. Together, these projects demonstrate that the most flexible and durable working environment will be ones that allow a diversity in spatial planning without sacrificing the cohesiveness of the urban form. We propose that the city needs not a collection of unrelated, separate buildings, but clusters of buildings that have reasons to be together: hybrid urban work/life models for the city and its architecture. These investigations depict possible working and living conditions in the City of Knowledge. Beyond these individual studies, the book introduces a number of references, case studies, conversations, debates and a glossary, which together represent the conceptual framework of the Berlage Institutes studio work. Dietmar Leyk Berlage Institute October 2010

19 The Utopian, the Real, the Generic, and the Specific Representation of Knowledge Work Dietmar Leyk Throughout history, architects have longed to devise new ideas for the perfect living and working environment. Social, political and cultural shifts continuously engender new urban and architectural concepts. While residential projects have been influential in the evolution of architecture, how and where we work have also had a tremendous impact on the layout of exciting new urban schemes, ideologies and concepts. What they all had in common, is the fact that they were at once utopian, realistic, generic and specific. The scale of the waterfront site in Berlin offers a unique opportunity to re-imagine a new kind of development for the city. While working on the City of Knowledge, we identified major principles to be used as driving forces for developing the projects both as urban design and architectural projects. Each of the following principles articulates a position relative to the city. Suburbanisation The organisation of knowledge work played a major role in the formation of the 20th century suburb. Economic and political factors pushed universities and research institutes out of the city centres to the peripheries. For example, the science and knowledge work in the United States was largely relocated to the suburbs in places like Silicon Valley after 1945. The same could be observed in many European cities and their university campuses after 1968. The City of Knowledge Research Initiative for Berlin is meant to be a counter movement that imagines spaces in the centre of the city, where knowledge work and living can create new networks of innovation and production. Programme and Representation Because you can work almost everywhere, one could argue that there is no distinct architectural manifestation of knowledge work any more. But you can also argue the opposite: There is in fact an infinite amount of possible representations today, depending on individuals and companies rituals. From this point of view, it is necessary to discuss the importance of social rituals together with the formal language that reflects the corporate life. William Mitchell discusses in City of Bits the transformation and dissolution of classic architectural representation related to its use. He writes: Increasingly, telecommunication systems replace circulation systems, and the solvent of digital information decomposes traditional building types. One by one, the familiar forms vanish. Not so long ago, when the world seemed simpler, buildings corresponded one-to-one with institutions and rendered those institutions visible. Architecture played an indispensable role by providing occupations, organisations, and social groupings with their public faces. Buildings were distinguished from one another by their different uses, and the inventory of those uses represented social division and structure. Furthermore, if we speak about a hybrid programme, with a multitude of uses, architecture has no formal representation deriving from its function other than a fragmented one, and not at all when the usage changes over time. But even the most flexible programme needs a unifying envelope, which in this case needs to generate its formal articulation from a different ideology. Place Place matters. The first issue is morphological, the second symbolic, the third programmatic, and the fourth is related to accessibility. By giving the site a sense of place and creating conditions in which people are able to identify with the particular area, the urban project becomes strategically significant for residents and users to the benefit of the entire city. Engaging the particularities of a site assigns difference to urban typologies. The universal becomes distinctive and allows the creation of differentiated and interactive interstitial areas within and between buildings. Therefore the projects allow the maximum number of encounters between institutions, businesses and enterprises of many different kinds and sizes, enabling interactions between individuals, and benefitting from their cultures and resources. Industrial sites that used to be located on the periphery of cities (or, in West Berlins case, even on the fringe of the western world) are now surrounded by the continually expanding urban fabric of the city. The urban projects for the City of Knowledge research initiative define an area with identifiable boundaries, a place that is engaged with the larger urban context. Form Form means the abstraction of the city (or architecture) as whole or as configuration of its components. The definition of its

The Utopian, the Real, the Generic, and the Specific / Dietmar Leyk

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Reference Map CK Studio: 01 Library of Alexandria | Ptolemy I Soter, 323-283 BCE. 02 John Locke 1632 - 1704. 03 Stanford University | 1884-1891. 04 Gewerbehof Berlin | Kurt Berndt, 1897-98. 05 Cit Industrielle | Tony Garnier, of Technology | 1918. Reference Map CK Studio: 07 Illinois Institute Library of Alexandria | Ptolemy I Mies | der Rohe, 1940. 06 Hufeisensiedlung BerlinvanBruno Taut & Martin Wagner, 1925-27. Soter, 323-283 BCE. 07 Illinois Institute of 08 Free University| Berlin | Candilis, Rohe, 1940. Technology Schiedhelm, 1963Mies van der John Locke 1632 - 1704. Josic, Woods, Stanford08 Free |University Berlin | Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm, 1963-1973. University 1884-1891. 1973. Gewerbehof Berlin | Kurt Berndt, Shanghai Kong & Shanghai Bank | Sir Foster, 2008. 09 Hong Bank | Sir Norman 09 Hong Kong & 1897-98. Norman Foster, 2008. 10 Workspace | Cit Industrielle | Tony Garnier, Berlin, Workspace | Berlin, 2010. 10 2010.

1918. 06 Hufeisensiedlung Berlin | Bruno Taut & Martin Wagner, 1925-27.

21 boundaries and scales belongs to this abstraction. Although there used to be a coherent concept of how to formally and spatially organise built-up areas in Germany and especially in Berlin, there is an absence of meaningful spatial relationships between buildings today. The cohesive urban form, the reason why separate buildings are located together, is missing. The concept of cohesive form is exemplified in large urban projects such as Berlins Weisse Stadt and Hufeisensiedlung, which were planned under the guidance of Martin Wagner for residential purposes and additional services. They are remarkable for their spatial cohesiveness, which has persisted to the present day. They still serve as civic microcosms and function as identifiable spaces of public appearance within the urban fabric of the Berlin. In terms of the master programme, the projects presented here have a purpose. They are conceived as a multi-use aggregation, including juxtapositions and superimpositions of different programmes that are not only closely interconnected but also linked to the larger context of the city. We imagine projects that can combine the idea of a single entity the coherent civic form with new concepts about hybrid programmes and mixed cultural, working and residential activities: not a collection of unrelated, separate buildings, but buildings that have reasons to be together. They can be built in various phases, but will still be identifiable as urban form with identifiable boundaries. The projects for the City of Knowledge therefore also methodologically investigate concepts of boundaries and scales not just observing and criticising such concepts, but also examining ways of utilising them. What are the ideological links between the buildings? What are the links between the parts of this new segment of the city, between the areas of housing, traffic systems, water, forests, agriculture and wasteland? The site in Berlin is treated as a single, coherent civic form, which integrates several buildings into a larger whole. Due to their size, content and form, the projects have the capacity to add quality to the surrounding city and give it a particular orientation. They enable the site to become an important part complementing and connecting the configuration of clearly identifiable islands within the city of Berlin. Institutions The urban project needs a centre of interest that is capable of attracting and initiating activities. What we envisage is a strong institutional programme forming the core activity. This could be both academic and recreational, as long as it represents a programme that appeals to the public. The project starts with the idea of gathering research institutes from the Berlin universities, drawing from different disciplines such as the humanities, sciences, arts, and engineering and including biotechnology, medicine, physics, and architecture as core activities for the site. Further programmes such as spin-offs and start-ups from the high-technology industry, residential programmes for knowledge workers and their families, as well as recreational facilities, mean that the project will encompass an economically and culturally diverse group of people, with a population density that will also lead to intensive integration into Berlins everyday life. By providing common areas public parks and gardens on the one hand, and a new kind of workspace infrastructure that is partly open to public use on the other the research initiative will support collaborative activities. The projects present facilities serving the common interest and instruments for social and academic education, offering new forms of social behaviour to residents and visitors . They create a new social reality in which groups and communities can participate together. Collaboration Edward Hall states in The Hidden Dimension that communication constitutes the core of culture and indeed of life itself. We are used to communicating in actual and virtual spaces. But it seems that the more we go digital, the more we are looking for a new corporeality. Furthermore, if personal contact between employers and clients improves the speed of decision-making, face-to-face meetings and spontaneous, unexpected collisions gain a new importance. The idea of the city strongly implies a concentration and diversity of different activities in one place. During the last few centuries, however, as society has become increasingly modernised, it has become a common practice to subdivide cities into purely single-programme zones such as the industrial zone, business district, residential area, museum district, etc. This type of division, which took place as early as the 19th century in Germany, does not contribute to the fruitful mixture of activities that is needed for a city to be a place for cultural exchange and production. Conventional Central Business Districts

The Utopian, the Real, the Generic, and the Specific / Dietmar Leyk (CBDs) exclude low-rental and small-scale work spaces, reducing the opportunities for valuable interactions between larger and smaller businesses, obstructing the growth of small, emerging businesses, and not providing enough interstitial space to allow for transcompany activities, mobile workers, or overlapping tasks that are characteristic of a networked society. By hybridising different programmes in a limited area like the City of Knowledge, the study strongly supports the idea that people collaborating in person and digitally are more productive and successful than isolated individuals working alone. The projects aim to attract both smaller and larger companies to exist side by side by creating areas that invite more complementary uses with greater potentials for intensive and interconnected use of spatial resources. Moreover, they provide open platforms for all sorts of programmatic proximity. Publicness The city has always been a public domain of interaction and creativity. But the definition of the public domain has changed. In Berlin, there is a large number of people working alone in the privacy of home. The notion of going to work always includes the idea of socializing with colleagues and of being in a shared space. There is an urgent need to offer a workplace in which individuals, who are part of the nomadic working society, can feel they are at work, while at the same time find desirable social relationships, even if only temporarily. This is one of the reasons why we are seeing nomadic working practices in many public places in Berlin and beyond. The conditions of the contemporary city reveal the obsolescence of pure working entities of the past, like the Central Business Districts. The dilemma with classic CBDs is that they allow for little or no public activity after working hours. In contrast, publicness both as the quality of being accessible to or shared by all members of the community, and as actual locations dedicated to workers welfare implies plentiful and attractive locations for encounters between workers, clients, and citizens 24 hours a day. There is a need to develop new work / life typologies that promote interaction and communication for the urban society. By liberating the site from many of its boundaries, the projects suggest new forms of physical and visual permeability to various extents. The site will be capable of being

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experienced and perceived as a single urban entity. By opening it up and establishing public exterior and interior spaces for working, learning, leisure activities, group work and individual tasks, the projects offer an integrated or distributed space that can act as a new kind of infrastructure for peoples everyday work. It will be a meeting place and workspace at the same time. Openness The more society becomes digital and virtual, the more its members long for physicalness. Since the body is the first and last domain of an authentic experience, the increasingly immaterial, high-tech tasks will paradoxically create a desire for a new corporeality in the work / life environment. Therefore, it will become increasingly imperative to open up any architectural enclosure to the outside world, literally and metaphorically. A high degree of transparency and equal exposure to the surrounding environment can be achieved by integrating one space with another, the interior with the exterior, and architecture with nature. Therefore, we need to consider the dimensions and especially the thinness of work / life architecture in the urban context, not only as an economic measure, but also a way to fulfil the fundamental need for corporeality and openness. Improving not only exterior views, but also transitional views between work environments across the exterior or within the interior has already received a new relevance. Frame Many urban projects are either so overspecific that they are unable to adapt to new requirements, or so generic that with minor changes they lose their sense of continuing order or visual consistency There is 1.5 million square metres of empty office space in Berlin. Almost none of it is suitable for current or emerging work / life patterns. Large amounts of office space are currently vacant or underused; many conventional offices are difficult to transform for use by emerging businesses and even more difficult to convert to alternative uses. There are also a large number of people in Berlin in young and smaller companies, as well as project-oriented workers, who no longer work in offices, but in locations that are not primarily designed as workspaces. Start-up companies in Berlin, and not only those involved in the creative industries, like to work in Gewerbehfe, historic manufacturing spaces located around

23private company

academic institution

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private company

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academic institution

6.671 WORKSPACES 2.191 INHABITANTS TOTAL AREA: 482.000 sqm FAR: 2.0

housing

WORKSPACES: 40% = 192.000 sqm RESIDENTIAL SPACES: 40% = 192.000 sqm OTHER SPACES: 20 % = 96.400 sqm

Initial programmatic layout

Interactive relationships

The Utopian, the Real, the Generic, and the Specific / Dietmar Leyk courtyards not only for the attractive rents, but also because those urban spaces provide blank, wide-open canvases where users can arrange new components to meet their own needs. Those buildings characteristics are articulated to the pure minimum. The following projects also point to this direction. For the City of Knowledge research, we are using the smallest organisational structure possible, in which individuals and groups are able to establish desirable relationships as efficiently and flexibly as possible. The projects maintain their sense of formal order and visual consistency. By providing buildings with indeterminate interiors like playing fields, the projects will offer a maximum of spatial options and will be able to serve as frameworks for working and living. They articulate more abstract rules instead of a purely spatial definition. Nearness Berlin has 200,000 commuters who spend an average of 60 minutes a day travelling from one place to another, particularly between home and work, and usually between the suburbs and the inner city. To counteract the huge amounts of time and energy wasted, Berlin needs to have attractive working and living environments that are within close reach of each other for all kinds of users. One of the advantages of urban life is that home and work ought to be close to each other. In addition, increasingly widespread access to information technology and peoples growing mobility are paradoxically reinforcing the need for face-to-face meetings. Due to increasing financial pressures on inner-city areas, it will become even more important to develop new strategies to bring working and living activities physically closer to each other. Nearness will acquire a new significance. Proximity also improves the atmosphere of the workplace. Elements of Berlins urban typology, such as the historic five-storey perimeter block, allows for dense neighbourhoods featuring a mixture of activities. Faades are usually placed opposite and very close to one another in inner-city Berlin. The City of Knowledge research features closely juxtaposed typological elements of contrasting scales and activities. In this context, nearness means that residential and workspace buildings are placed together on a limited site. Having green spaces in the vicinity is a further important part of this concept. Working and living activities are hybridised into a collective urban form, juxtaposing purely residential or

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commercial spaces with areas in which work and leisure activities are mixed. It might be said that this type of nearness is an exploration of ways in which interactions are possible both with and without overlapping. Hybridisation From the early beginnings of the study we discussed finding new potentials of hybridisation in the increasing blending of working and living. If we assume that the knowledge worker sleeps 8 hours a day, it means his other 16 hours are permeated by work. In this respect, the dialectical relationship between work and living spaces doesnt exist any more. And the very ideas of living space and office space have changed tremendously. In genetics, hybridisation is the process of combining different varieties or species of organisms to create a hybrid. In Globalisation Theory, hybridisation also refers to an ongoing blending of cultures. Those definitions of hybridisation draw interesting parallels to what is happening to the workspace today. One interesting result of hybridisation is unexpected encounters. The stimulating proximities of working, living and recreation in a dense urban environment, inside one building, or even one apartment produce a sort of confrontation. You always encounter something, under, above and beside you. Activities taking place in those spaces are very distinct, but somehow relate to one another and create a new, unexpected quality. Temporality Large amounts of office space today are under-occupied and under-used and cannot cope with the requirements of emerging work / life patterns. If a worker uses five distinct spaces for five different activities, most of the spaces would not be used at any given time of the day. Alternatively, if he can share a single space for five different activities with colleagues, the space would be used continuously in a more rational and even choreographic way. The level of occupancy of the space makes all the difference. The latter option implies abandoning any sense of territorial ownership, with a radical rethinking of the ways in which work and leisure time are structured. In contrast to the measurable and calculated concept of chronology, the aspect of temporality is concerned with the ritualised way in which a sequence of events, a kind of history, is physically experienced by those who live through them. The City of Knowledge is concerned with the provision of the widest range of options within

25 the minimum amount of permanent definition. Experience As a general concept, experience consists of diverse effects like knowledge, skills, and observations stemming from involvement or exposure to objects and events. The etymology of the word experience shows a close link to the concept of experiment. When organising and designing workspace, it is imperative to consider the notion of experience that is, its multifaceted and experimental nature. The varied story of what a worker does and the specific choreography of his or her everyday tasks appear to be one of the main aspects involved in creating value not only economic, but also social. It strengthens corporate culture and its rituals. Individualism is expressed in the choices people make in everyday life. As modern technology has made workers increasingly mobile, freedom of choice has become a cardinal principle to consider. It has become more and more difficult to predict peoples behaviour during ones workday. Therefore, a variety of possible experiences is a fundamental desire today. This means not only understanding the needs of various users in a given space, but also identifying all of the social protocols that are involved, so that the space can become a genuine tool for enhancing the social experience. The concept of providing a potential experience generally involves expertise or procedural knowledge, rather than propositional knowledge onthe-job training rather than book learning. Experience underlines the social aspects of working: the way in which workers, citizens, and clients identify with the urban project and its architecture. Architecture We can work in libraries, hotel lobbies, airport lounges, or cafs. But that doesnt necessarily mean that we should organise a workspace to resemble an airport lounge or a library. We must pose a more important question: How does architecture invite a certain way of behaviour? Architecture is usually interpreted as a static entity. We, on the other hand, look at architecture in its performative way: Not what architecture is, but what architecture does. This shift in perception changes the way we perceive architecture. It sets the stage for a challenging debate concerning the following issues: How does architecture change the performance of people, light, wind, and more? What is the relationship between human performance and form architectural and also in a larger urban scale? How does architecture engage with the common space? How does architecture define micro common spaces? How do social choreographies influence interactions between behaviour and appearance of architecture? Companies expand, companies shrink, companies restructure themselves. The user needs spaces, which he can transform. Aforementioned Gewerbehfe, or industrial spaces in Berlin, which are popular among start-up companies, perfectly personify such flexibility. Like an empty stage, they provide a platform where the user can freely express himself and perform his work choreographies. Likewise, the projects in this volume also suggest a kind of canvas on which organisation and re-composition can take place. Terry West summed up these projects by saying that besides the economies of space and architectural managing, the other part is the way in which new value is created among creative people. They sort of recompose it almost, as if you are recomposing a movie. (Terry West, Green Light Review, Berlage Institute Rotterdam 2010) As a consequence organising the workspace today requires a director or a curator who can orchestrate architecture to foster diverse experiences and performances.

26 Berlin Berlin is a metropolitan region with 4.1 million inhabitants, 3.4 million of which reside inside the city boundaries. The population density varies from district to district. Inside the administrative boundary an average of 3,810 people live per km2, whereas the central area has 7,124 people per km2. The most dense neighbourhoods count up to 21,700 people per km2. Berlin has been transformed by numerous political, social and economic events. As a capital, it has represented competing and multifarious power structures. Forming an important connection between the present and the past, it has witnessed a wide spectrum of customs and traditions, shaped by travellers, residents, customers, immigrants, and business people. With the eastward expansion of the European Union in 2006, Berlins prominence has only increased as the city finds itself at the crossroad of East and West in the centre of Europe Berlin is an example of societys increasing individualisation, both in terms of living and working. 53 % of the apartments in Berlin are one-person households. The combination of cheap living costs, a large supply of rental housing and vibrant cultural scenes makes it attractive for freelancers from different countries. Many individual knowledge workers are dispersed in the city and seek spaces for collaborative work where they can meet one another to become part of a larger community and access services, information and social life. Is it possible to invent a facility, a common space, where these people meet and connect? Berlin is a green city. Of its land surface of 892 km2, 14 % is public parks and gardens, plus 18 % forests, 7 % water and 5% agricultural areas. Together Berlin comprises of 44 % green area and 56 % built area. The abundance of nature in the city and the fast and efficient connections to its surrounding green areas count as Berlins top qualities. To reduce the green surface to make room for buildings would be counterproductive for the life quality in the city. Is it possible to maintain the quality of the green area while densifying the built areas that already exist? After 1989 Berlin began to lose its character as a city of multiplicity. Instead, the formerly distinguishable districts became more and more homogeneous and undifferentiated. Can we strengthen or complement unique characteristics of existing spatial entities and urban projects, like Karl Marx Allee, Tempelhof

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metro station railway station bus station

boat station metroline tramline

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27 Airport, or places like Weisse Stadt or Hufeisensiedlung, with new, identifiable urban projects to emphasise the citys spatial diversity through a new polycentric ideology? There are 200.000 people commuting everyday between home and work in the Berlin region. They spend an average of 60 minutes on their journey per day. More and more business parks are popping up outside of the city boundaries. 150 biotechnical research labs employ around 3,000 workers in Berlin. Most of them are located in the periphery of the city. Because of the workers unusual working and living schedules caused by time differences, they lack social infrastructures, especially during the night when they are collaborating with Asian or American colleagues. Inside of the city boundary, we still find a large amount of periphery-like conditions, which are empty or underused. The site between Kpenicker Strasse and the Spree is one of them. Can we concentrate more population inside of the citys boundary, instead of letting it spill out to the suburbs? How should the quality of working and living inside the city replace the preconceptions and fears that suburbanites have? Can we bring back the suburbanised knowledge production into the city? The urban projects for the City of Knowledge study are large-scale schemes imagined for the year 2030. Other current projects in Berlin, like the master plans for Berlin Heidestrasse (construction starts 2010), Airport Tempelhof or Airport Tegel clearly show that already today there is a need for large scale conceptual thinking. Abandoned infrastructure areas and industrial wastelands open up new potentials not only in Berlin, but also in other centres of European cities. Site The history of the river Spree is largely influenced by the history of industrial transportation. Water as a valuable asset for improving working and living conditions inside the city was not recognized for a very long time. The site between Kpenicker Strasse and the river Spree was a place of political division in post-war urban planning. The Berlin Wall divided the city not only physically, but also into two planning ideologies. To the north of the site, the Spree acted as a border between the two Germanys. That is why, with some minor exceptions, the access to the Spree between Kpenicker Strasse and the riverfront is closed. Visual connections are missing. The sites value has not been sufficiently investigated yet. Can we open the waterfront as common space for the citizens? Can the City of Knowledge become initial paradigmatic projects for a potential chain of work / life projects along the river, where the river becomes a new structuring element for Berlin? The northern side of the River Spree is being developed as Media Spree, a dense working and living district, where the historic fabric of the city formally continues. Can we complement this urban project by creating a different spatial organisation on the southern side of the river to underline the spatial diversity in Berlin?

Data Time

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24h today

Yearly working time, source: OECD in figures, OECD Paris, 2004

24h in the past

Space

Working time in h. per year (black), commuting, residential life, & recreation in h. per year (gray)

Average office rental area per employee in Europe (gross), source: Cushman & Wakefield (2006)

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Average office rental area per employee in Europe (gross), source: Cushman & Wakefield (2006)

Workspace occupancy, source: Frank Duffy, The Work and the City

Programmatic diversity in different cities

Growing space per capita in Europe, source: Ober-Haus Real Estate (2006)

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The Urban Lobby In Celebrating the Third Place, Ray Oldenburg called for a new kind of common space. He wrote: Life without community has produced, for many, a lifestyle consisting mainly of a home-to-work-and-back-again shuttle. Social well-being and psychological health depend upon community. It is no coincidence that the helping professions became a major industry in the United States as suburban planning helped destroy local public life and the community support it once lent. Most needed are those third places, which lend a public balance to the increased privatization of home life. Third places are nothing more than informal public gathering places. The phrase third places derives from considering our homes to be the first places in our lives, and our work places the second. For the City of Knowledge Research Initiative we were looking for another kind of third space, a space that provides an architectural environment, which fosters thinking and imagination. We reconsidered two architectural concepts by Mies van der Rohe the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois and the National Gallery in Berlin. With the National Gallery, Mies creates an urban counterpart to the Farnsworth House. While nature acts a framework for the house, the city becomes the galleriess wider context. Fritz Neumeyer compares it to Schinkels spatial model for the Roman baths in Potsdam that preceded Mies by more than one century. Neumeyer observes two ideas behind these conceps: the space of contemplation, and the viewing frame. For Neumeyer, the space of contemplation must not dissolve into function, for in it, something remains aloof, beyond time. (Fritz Neumeyer, The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art). Those spaces are not completely filled with predefined functions and not economically efficient in the first place. They provide space for unexpected activities. When combining Oldenburgs and Neumeyers observations, can we create a new concept for knowledge work in the city? The City of Knowledge Research Initiative includes a photographic research about the performative aspects of the National Gallery in and outside to study the possibility that this interior space can be a role model for physical and virtual collaborative work for the community. Can it be a common space that brings people together who share interests or goals, and thereby creating communities? A public space where workers can spontaneously gather and engage in tacit learning the Urban Lobby?

Urban Projects Bars Andreas Karavanas Urban Project The project constitutes a system of precisely defined parallel strips, which stretch from the existing city fabric to the river. It establishes a visual relationship between the street and the water and makes use of the areas great perspective depth. Volumes with different widths and interstitial spaces with different surfaces provide a multitude of environments for both theory (brainwork) and practice (laboratories and production) a continuous alteration of the void and the built. The project addresses a dense population community where the diversified rhythm in distance and width of parallel slices creates a hybridisation of buildings, green, river and programme. Park: The whole site is organised by a series of north-south landscape strips. Together with the screens they define the rhythmic principle of the project. The whole car-free ground floor turns into a promenade along the river front, providing the opportunity for pedestrian journeys through different types of landscapes. Since the site is transformed from a former industrial area into a production landscape with biotechnological laboratories, agricultural fields, and different kinds of gardens, it provides a sustainable way of living and working, not only in terms of environmental issues, but also by means of social integration. The park is treated as an identity laboratory, constantly changing rather than enshrining. Observations Today, with some small exceptions, the site from Kpenicker Strasse to the Spree is closed. Visual connections are missing. Exploring the valuable depth of the site has not been sufficiently investigated yet. Biotechnology plants represent the idea of production and brainwork at the same time. The use of experimental production fields, together with the notion of opening it to the public inside the city boundaries, has not been explored yet. The production of knowledge is based on constant learning and exchanging, which would eventually become a form of innovation in itself. The clustering of domains, spin-offs and established companies can create a very valuable place of face-to-face exchange and virtual communication. A problematic trend that characterises contemporary Berlin is the development of business parks (knowledge

32 campuses) out of the city boundary. There are 150 biotechnical research labs with around 3,000 employees in the Berlin region. Most of them are located in different places in suburbanised areas around Berlin. Because of the unusual working and living schedules, due to global connectedness, the worker lacks social infrastructures, especially during the night. The project counters the suburbanising of knowledge. Its quality is the coexistence of different kinds of populations, citizens, employees and visitors with different professional degrees and backgrounds. The whole project becomes an accumulation of private and public domains, where urban life becomes a field of communication, in the intersection of different spheres. Architecture and programme Bars addresses a dense urban community by juxtaposing working and living spaces, leisure and public space inside the city boundary a city within the city. There is a clear graduation of publicness. The ground floor offers a collection of elements that can be rented out for temporary use. The parallel slabs above are dedicated to both small and large companies, and residents. The project specifies areas that are dedicated to living and production, and those that are dedicated to gathering and exchanging information. It is organised by four elements: Firstly the screens, housing and working slabs, which appear like a collection of walls in different widths across the whole site. Secondly bridges between them blur their strong disposition. Thirdly the lobby, assembled out of a series of pavilions. Fourthly, the park, which can be considered as a hybrid between a productive landscape and a public park, presents a new concept for the reuse of the former industrial site. The new tramline connects not only the project with the city but also the different domains within the site. Screens: Working and living spaces are organised by the same rules, creating a common regime of screens under which both activities unfold. The screens give rhythm to a selection of different production gardens. Each screen has its own appearance, depending on the proximity to each other. The sequence of different screens provides flexible spaces for continuous alterations. Although the living and working spaces maintain their identifiable characters, by being together in close proximity to each other, they generate many opportunities related to the notion of third spaces.

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Urban Projects / Bars Bridges: The boundaries between residential and working areas are clearly defined but opened locally through bridges. Bridges between different screens and technological domains create a series of horizontal connections through the whole site and offer a multitude of meeting places. By stressing the idea of co-owned spaces, it also addresses the blurring boundary between the collective and private. These distributed lobbies, consisting of meeting rooms or services, aim to improve the communication and the exchange of knowledge. These intersections of different spheres establish places of chance encounters. Log in: Since the project provides theory (brainwork) and practice (laboratory experiments and production) in the same place, it supports the technological innovation in the city and clusters large companies with small ones. The whole artefact shows a community as accumulation of singular cases hosted in overlapping layers of different networks. The entrance on the site represents a login into different networks. Urban Lobby: A permeable plinth runs along the street and acts as collective promenade. It is conceived as a one-storey volume that creates a base for the screens and acts as a buffer zone between the city and the park. It provides and juxtaposes working spaces with public programme and spaces for everyday activities. It defines a multiple yet common landscape. This public gallery distributes different traffic flows to different levels, limits the accessibility to the offices and acts as a common field for the exchange of experiences between employees, visitors and citizens. The plan is derived from a grid of various rectilinear shapes reflecting programmatic adjacencies, becoming flexible according to the use and the needs of the citizens. The lobby space offers permeability from the street to the park but also visual interaction between the different programmatic areas. In this way the plinth becomes a container of public programme, an urban lobby accessible to all the citizens a social condenser.

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6. Type A: Clusters of working and living slabs connected by bridges (common spaces) 5. Type B: Working units and hotel rooms combined in the same slab (vertical stacking of program) 4. Type C: Working and a living slab combined in different horizontal and vertical connections 3. City connectors: 1. Tram line running through the site connecting with the citys public transportation system 2. Various bridges connecting to the other side of the river 2. Urban lobby: Accumulation of rooms with different public facilities and working spaces 1. Park: Stratified park, filled with production zones and technological labs

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View from Kpenicker Strasse to research park

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roof level with private terraces living unit level living unit level living access level- sky lobby working unit level working level- open plan working access levelreception - lobby

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Urban Projects Islands Xiaochao Song Urban Project Islands establishes a cluster of eight islands in the river and adds a new large public domain to the city. By using the smallest organisational structure as possible with the greatest efficiency and flexibility, it brings back the notion of village into the centre of the city, including an intimate scale and privacy. It gives the nomadic worker the feeling of being a Berliner- with his own house and garden. Because the project keeps a sense of cohesive order and visual consistency, it creates a strong presence. The notion of variety within a modular system underlines this concept. For the 2028 Olympic Games, Islands offers a bold residential concept for the international athletes. Security and community as the most challenging issues can be solved through the idea of the islands. After the games the project becomes a place for the nomadic population. It allows the mixing of working and living, public and private, new architectures and historic buildings. By distributing simple modules over the whole site, the project creates a new collective form towards a non-hierarchical organisation to meet the demands of nomadic knowledge workers. The project generates a low-density park-like village within the city centre, which is framed by a sequence of islands in order to maximise the intertwining between the riverfront and the public domain. The diverse organisational patterns of the units located on the different islands generate a multitude of social relationships. Moreover, in this modular system, since each single unit is for rent and the functions are exchangeable, it holds the concept of unexpected neighbourhoods. You can never expect who your neighbour will be next week. Where is he from? What profession does she have? In which language does he talk to you? It is a permanently hybridised community. It is a village full of strangers, comparable to the concept of Olympic villages, where people come together for a limited time only. Architecture and program Unit: To avoid an iconic representation, which does not fit the urban nomadic workspace, the whole project is fragmented and based around the organisation of a single unit. To allow for maximum natural light, a high degree of flexibility, and a close relationship to the surrounding forest, the

40 minimum size of the unit structure is 8m x 8m. Observations The temporality of project-related work requires only temporary stay and use of a place. The nomadic worker comes for 1 day or 6 months, alone, with colleagues, or with their families, and usually stays in hotels or inefficient short-term flats. Especially in Berlin, we find a large number of small start-up companies, with insecure futures, which may grow or disappear. Combining them with the temporary presence of global companies in one place can be very efficient for all. The Spree has always been used by the industry. The widening of the river has only been done for the purpose of building harbours. Extending the width of the river through canals around the islands will connect the Spree more efficiently with the residential areas. Many companies believe in the power of iconic buildings. Not enough research has been done how other models of operative strategies could replace the iconic office building. Islands: The size of the eight islands is based on the surrounding dimensions of the urban fabric. The extension of the boundary between land and water allows for a more intensive connection between the river and the residential areas to bring the waterfront back to the city. Each island type represents a mix of dense working and living activities open for 24 hours, 7 days. In order to generate a diverse and hybrid working and living environment, four types of organisational principles are applied to the islands: 1. Type A, suitable for start-up companies, envisions each building representing an individual world where you have a garden and a platform. 2. Type B provides an intimate communication platform for close relationships between people and companies. Also there is an attempt to maximise the use of the underground space. 3. Type C works like a pixel concept. It attempts to make a more sustainable and changeable potential system. 4. Type D is inspired by the street life in Berlin where all kinds of performances occur. Sport facilities: In order to set up a programmatic relationship between the green belt and the islands, sport fields act as common links. Resort Hotel: Islands is based around the investigation of time consumption. According to different occupations, different tasks, different personal preferences and more, the workers tend to have different schedules over a day, a month or within an entire year. Therefore we introduce a rental management

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Urban Projects / Islands system for the project. Thinking about the entire project as a resort hotel with divers offerings, from 3 stars to 5 stars, each unit can be compared to a single hotel room, which can be rented by one person or by large companies whenever they want. Historic buildings: There are several historic buildings on the site, which are multifunctional public buildings serving the whole community, such as a museum, gallery, library, theatre, restaurant, supermarket, gym, and more. Relationship: Space is a form of relationship. Islands is based on the consideration of relationships. It describes not only the relationship between people, but also the relationship between people and the environment. The spatial organisation of the project reflects a specific model of social value judgments. Benefitting from the development of mobile technology, a knowledge worker can serve different companies at the same time, and can be gradually detached from the fixed location. This means that there is no hierarchy any more, and workers have a short-lived relationship between each other. Bigger groups are gradually splitting into small work forces, and teams separate into individuals. Park as Institution: The project establishes a new public park within the city centre, combining working, living and recreating. The surrounding park is not a pure forest. It consists of two types of vegetation. The outermost part is a sequence of flower gardens, which are arranged in linear way, parallel to Kpenicker Strasse. The middle part is topiary garden with a height of two meters, acting as a filter to the forest. Urban Lobby: The lobbies grow and shrink. Under the requirements of the flexible operative system, according to neighbouring conditions, the lobbies are like tentacles sounding through the structures. The places where people meet and exchange information spontaneously are open units. They are directly connected to the working and living cells.

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8. 16-22m hotel 0-16m multi-functional programs 7. 9-15m housing units 0-12m workspace units 0-6m urban lobby citizens 0-6m lobby for working and living 0-6m access ground floor 0.6m sport fields bridging the islands with city 0-3m expanding underground as office space 0-6m underground parking area

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Urban Projects Matrix Pedram Dibazar Urban Project Against todays backdrop of fragmented leftovers, Matrix establishes an urban carpet, divided into a series of urban spaces (Stadtrume). Like the typical Berlin courtyards inside a perimeter block, the rooms are hidden behind the building lines. Thirteen high-rise buildings grow in height from the east to the west to the direction of the city centre. Some of the existing buildings are embedded in the new matrix. Together they form a new neighbourhood with strong, identifiable characteristics. The project represents a living matrix with an unusual pattern of non-hierarchical rooms. The rooms vary in size. The rich urban fabric separates and connects the project to the city. It represents a sequence of rooms next to one another, an urban lobby that hosts the knowledge workers. The ground floor is the meeting point, where the spaces of the upper floors and the expanded fabric of the city meet. It allows a smooth horizontal transition on the street level, from where vertical access is offered locally to the private units above, dedicated to office spaces, core hubs, and living. A grid of 13m high walls frames the rooms. Observations The relation between working times, commuting time and leisure time is ambiguous. Working is everywhere and every minute. But the question of place matters. Living and working is about choice and discovery of place. Unexpected encounters between people and places count. Mobile employees, together with office space efficiency, make the notion of fixed workplace territory more and more obsolete. The advantages of non-place efficiency strategies have not been really explored yet. It requires further investigations. Paradigmatic shifts in a globalised world with distributed work situations require parallel working time around the globe. Production is not from 09.00h - 17.00h, but different people come from different reasons to work in many different shifts from 0.00h to 24.00h. The spatial adaptability in connection to this new 24-hour occupancy of space is missing. The culture of living and working is about choice, discovery and unexpected encounters. The knowledge worker looks for temporary, non-dedicated, impromptu spaces, which support collaboration; act as a resource and a base. It includes hotel-like services, non-

48 territorial workspaces, in-between spaces. This trend is multifaceted: a mlange of cultures, generations, purposes and dimensions. By creating a dense neighbourhood situation of work-life centres, it is at the same time social, educational, nomadic, declassifying, participatory, and fluid. Knowledge workers are more and more nomadic. Therefore the city provides new institutions as inward campuses, which include a variety of spaces for the people to choose from. Day after day certain randomness creates an experience of renewal. The inward campus represents an institution. It includes institutional control while being open and attractive to the outside and the city. Architecture and programme The rooms create a dense neighbourhood of work-life centres, which are temporarily determined. Whereas the ground floor is dedicated to a rich mix of different, changing activities, the upper floors are dedicated either to work or living spaces. The living spaces, the workspaces, the lobby rooms, the service and the leisure-oriented spaces keep their respective pure form and character. Only by being juxtaposed to each other they create hybrid situations. Residential areas are located up in the towers while the workspaces are limited to the three floors inside the grid of walls, keeping them close to the lobby. The whole notion of division between working, living and leisure is dissolved by putting them next to each other, treating them with no hierarchy, and making a synchronised narration instead of a chronological one. The rooms are open for nightly events. The matrix constitutes a 24 hour city with performances at night, ranging from dormitory rooms to rooms that host events at night: parties, concerts, sports, or workspaces for overnight, intense project work for a company, which rents a room for a period of time. Permeability: The boundary from the city is permeable, though with different levels of accessibility. The transparency of the walls parallel to the street makes it visually connected to the riverfront, with different layering and visibility. The situation inside the campus is of closeness and adjacency. The juxtaposed rooms, with clear dimensions and boundaries from one another, bring about unexpected situations, based on the principles of collision and conflict. Rooms are identifiable by their boundaries, and their relation to the next rooms. There is no

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Urban Projects / Matrix continuous space or a corridor. Rooms become units that build up the whole narration in a sequencing composition. The second boundary exists between the lobby on the ground floor and the upper floors, which are dedicated either to work or living spaces. The living spaces, the work stations, the lobby rooms, the service- and the leisureoriented rooms keep their respective pure form and character, though by being juxtaposed to each other create third situations. Residential areas are sent up to the sky in the towers while the workspace is kept close to the lobby. The divisions between work, life and leisure are blurred by putting the spaces next to each other and treating them with no hierarchy, and making a synchronised narration instead of a chronological one. Walls and Rooms: There are only rooms. Each room has a specific character, which is fixed in dimensions and flexible in use. Each chamber is specific, while all together create a generic concept. Dimensions, materiality and activity obtain the specificity. Individual characters give importance and credibility to each space. Rooms are organised as a whole by juxtaposition, making direct one-to-one, face-to-face contact between one another. There are no neutral spaces like corridors. Each room becomes a lobby-room. There is no passage. Everything is organised through cuts. The notion of short and long distance has changed. Everything is next door. Every space is reachable through sequencing, which is free of choice. Unexpectedness occurs. Face-to-face situations arise. Direct cuts without insertion of a third party generate third spaces. Each room is a fragment, assembled with others, establishes difference. The juxtaposition calls for the active participation of each user to bring about his emotion and reading of the sequencing (Kuleshev effect). It creates the analogy to an episodic drama. All episodes are happening at the same time. Discontinuity is valued as such. The cuts create impossible spatial matches. This is done by an obvious cut rather than a seamless procedure. The whole experience celebrates the notion of montage with pure, original models based on the principles of collision and conflict: conflicts of scale, volume, rhythm, motion and conceptual value. Urban Lobby: The ground floor is a sequence of side-by-side rooms, side-by-side lobbies, which as a whole generate the urban lobby. The society of rooms on the ground floor becomes an urban lobby that hosts the knowledge workers. This is the meeting point

50 of the concentrated spaces of the floors above and the expanded fabric of the city. Although keeping the anonymity of its guests, the lobby presents a variety of spatial conditions, that help the participant of the space to choose from and identify with the condition that he values, or the one that he finds valuable as he encounters in the set of distributed rooms. The encounter, and probable identification afterwards, exceeds the sole spatial condition of the chamber to its juxtaposed conditions, to the performance in the consecutive chambers, and to the people one encounters on the same chamber, as a visitor, colleague or competitor. The lobby provides a smooth horizontal circulation on the ground level, the street level, from where vertical access is offered locally to the private units above, dedicated to office spaces, core hubs, and living. Matrix can be accessed from all sides. Since the walls are 4m raised above ground level, the project allows for a multitude of visual connections between the street and the river front. Its distributed and fragmented character opens up multiple entrances along its boundary, making it a distributed, noncentred, non-hierarchical spatial system. When walking along the Spree the citizens passing by experience a rhythm of different atmospheres, relating to the different rooms, which are open to the river. Most of the rooms are interior spaces, interior gardens, fields, or courts comfortable, silent, mysterious spaces disrupted from the city. It represents a variety of spatial conditions, between the notions of a continuous park and fragmented atriums. It offers the visitor a menu to choose from and identify with the condition that he values, or the one that he finds valuable as he encounters in the set of distributed rooms. The lobby in this case the assemblage of lobbies is open for different people from different social backgrounds, different ages, and different professions. It offers a rich menu of spatial conditions to work together, adjacent to each other, in close proximity, and in a flexible, non-assigned manner. It allows for an accumulation of choices, free to choose, in respect to dimension, activity, lighting, climate, view, privacy, and more. The question is: which one do you prefer? It would be a total hybrid of not only home and workspace, but recreation and work, city and neighbourhood, public and private, amateur and professional. Identities: The society of rooms becomes a society of distributed and fragmented

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Urban Projects / Matrix identities. There is no big entity. Everything is fragmented, and based on a system of temporary rent out. A company is fragmented into different concentration units, hubs and data centres. The big identities, like a whole room rented out to a company for the duration of a single project, are the temporary ones. The distribution system is like an open source website where different data comes simultaneously from different sources, all with the same level of access and representation. The moderator role could be a rotating responsibility among the members, which could be merged with a curatorial notion in cases, giving an agenda to the distribution of knowledge in the chambers on a temporary basis. Thus an open source knowledge museum could be imagined, where a curator selects and orchestrates the interior knowledge environment. Interiorised Urban Space: Matrix is a place of open rooms, interior gardens, fields, or courts. This is relevant to the courtyards within courtyards of the Berlin city blocks that host cosy, silent, mysterious spaces disrupted from the city. The interior condition also makes it suitable for the tough winter Berlin climate. Social Encounters: Here, encounters gain a quality of unexpectedness, originated from personal choice of space and time. The lobby becomes a society of encounters, not only between people of different backgrounds and different knowledge groups, but also between people in, or next to, different spatial conditions. That is because the sociability is not limited to the codes and regimes of workspaces, but consists of more life-like situations, ranging from knowledge based spaces like the library, to the sports centres and the playgrounds. Maximum Use: Because of its adaptable spaces, the chambers are open for nightly events. The campus is a 24 hour city with clear performances at night, ranging from chambers of dormitories to chambers that host events at night: parties, concerts, gym, or an overnight, intense project of an office that rents a chamber for a period of time. Time: Like space, time is fragmented in the project. The user divides his time between different chambers during the day, for their different spatial characteristics and inspirations they might bestow to the knowledge worker during different periods of his work. The participant gets the opportunity to manage his time, and with it, opening up to different encounters.

52 The Workspaces: The project offers a flexible territory to choose from every day or every hour. Several digital devices allow constructing an efficient and motivating performance for the employees. Each company can rent a minimum core office space for their secure data and administration tasks, or completely avoid territorial ownership. Spaces to meet, learn, or work in seclusion can be booked in advance. The project offers a rich menu of experiences for the employee, employer and freelances and counteracts the repetitive daily work rhythm. Company Ritual: The project amplifies adaptable working rhythms. The ritual supports change and high expectations of powerful experiences. The unexpected becomes a source of inspiration. The historic notion of visual control of the employees presence gives way to a free to choose system in which the employee is never there but always there. The whole campus becomes the shared territory of the citizens, making everybody at home while they are actually around. Spatial Menu: The project offers a spatial menu, where work and leisure are intertwined. The aim is to break up the modern division between work, life and leisure in terms of space and time by bringing them altogether in direct juxtaposition to each other, yet maintaining their respective specificity and integrity. The project enhances the multitude of unexpected conditions and amplifies the culture of choice in the use of space. Open Frame: The project is open, and generates spatial conditions for different people from different social backgrounds, different ages, and different professions. It offers an opportunity to work together adjacent to each other, in close proximity, and in a flexible, non-assigned manner. It allows for an accumulation of choices, in respect to dimension, activity, lighting, climate, view, privacy, and more. It would be a total hybrid of not only home and workspace, but recreation and work, city and neighbourhood, public and private, amateur and professional.

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A day in the life of an executive of a media company

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View from Kpenicker Strasse through lobby towards the Spree

View through the lobbies

Urban Projects Net Keming Wang Urban Project By establishing a floating network of working, living, and recreating spaces, Net transforms the whole site into a public park. Since the north and the south boundaries of the site are not connected today, the architecture offers a new open space for stays, transitions and crossing views under the building. Five programmatic types are invented for the site: the public park, the urban lobbies, the working and living net, the roof garden and the roof top. The open plan layouts for the different floor levels support the hybrid character of the interior. In addition to the workspace program, the building includes mixed functions related to the academic and practice, such as residential and recreation spaces. Observations The connection between the riverfront and Kpenicker Strasse is closed and there is no continuous public promenade along the Spree today. An existing system of parks, like Grlitzer Park, Mauerstreifen and Engeldamm, lies in the direct surroundings of the site. The project can complement a further green node in this configuration of public domains. The phenomena of extending and shrinking a companys space in one building without losing a specific spatial configuration have not been sufficiently investigated yet. As a result of globally connected project work and new social structures there is a growing issue of flexible time related occupancy in the workspace. It requires service facilities around the workspace, which are available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Architecture and program The architecture represents a new urban form for the city. Form and dimension of the net are inversions of the Berlin street pattern and the perimeter blocks, where the streets become the grid and the blocks become the courtyards. The new net-like fabric generates a new relationship between exterior and interior, a pattern offering diverse movements and porosities. Net. Above the lobbies floats the net-like volume, which consists of a three-dimensional grid and courtyards. The Net comprises three widths for different workspace layouts: 20m for workspaces with a traditional window space and storage layout. 12m for a mixed working and living workspace, and 9m for

56 high-end workspaces directly related to the exterior and natural light. At the same time the net contains a free open plan, open for workspaces, residential parts and recreation facilities. The notion of build your own space is taken seriously. The company expands and shrinks, expanding through the net, creating plans that can be compared to Chinese figures. Because of its direct relationships to the exterior, the interior of the net interacts with its surroundings, opening up to the park and the waterfront. The internal transparency of the building represents a kaleidoscope of knowledge. Spatial Configuration: While a generic office layout locates the service spaces in the centre to leave the periphery for workspaces, in this design both workspaces and service spaces are always located close to the faade to receive daylight, independent of the layout of the larger company. The workspaces are always in a very direct relationship to the exterior, either to the surrounding city or the many different courtyards. The spatial network offers an infinite amount of different variations to extend and shrink the companies territory in three dimensions. The company defines its space according to its needs and the availability of rooms in the architecture. The large-scale systematic arrangement creates a plan, which is open, but carefully moulded through the architectural form of the building. The form of the plan or the spatial configuration of the company can change on short notice. The worker redefines its workspace in the same rhythm. Social Encounters: The transparency of the building allows a visual unity between workers among each other and the activities in the park. Next to the public park, the lobbies on the ground floor as well as the public recreation facilities on the upper floors create intense meeting places for social interactions. The fact that the building contains working, residential and recreation facilities underlines the intimate, side by side quality of the daily life in the city. The worker is always embedded in an urban environment also at nights or weekend. Courtyards. The building consists of 40 courtyards, which encourages a maximum of interfaces with the outside and allows for a rich penetration of natural light. The open ground floor establishes a vertical connection through the courtyard to the working and living spaces above. Different dimensions and contents give orientation and diversity to the net. Every courtyard works like a window, depending on your position, to the park or the

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Urban Projects / Net sky. It assigns different themes, providing quality and identity to the working environment. Park. The floating volume liberates the ground floor for the park. The park becomes an institution where concerts and private parties can be hosted. Political rallies can be held here. The park is organised by six stripes, which provide six different spatial experiences and qualities. According to various compositions, this series creates subtle differences inside the courtyards. 1. Canal: distributing water over the whole project and creating an extension of the waterfront. 2. Platform: as interaction generator the platform hosts many social activities and events. 3. Grass: has the same function as the platform, but with different surfaces, and therefore more events requiring more seating. 4. Bushes: 0.9m to 1m high bushes dividing the ground into different areas without blocking visual interactions. 5. Pine trees: 2m to 3m high vegetation walls 6. Trees: 6m to 9m high trees inheriting the green from Berlins current and historical condition. Roof Garden. The roof of the Net represents a city podium where people meet and relax while enjoying the dynamic views onto the river and Berlin. With dynamic views onto Caen and a simultaneous internal transparency, the building is an observatory of knowledge. Information Exchange: The building supports both planned and spontaneous information exchange in groups and for individuals. Related to the form of the net, every node contains the possibility to use the full service, whereas the lines between the nodes contain more individual spontaneous meeting facilities. Urban Lobby. To keep the ground as free as possible, the lobbies are the only structures that touch the ground floor. They physically connect the interior and the exterior. Following the logic of construction and circulation the lobbies are equally dispersed over the site and inhabit two- and threestorey high entrance spaces. At an urban scale, they are located in an attractive and unique park. At the architectural scale the park enters the common workplace and vice versa. Because of their different dimensions, the lobbies contain a multitude of different workspace programs and events. Lobby means temporary and indefinite, both in space and time.

58

5. 3rd and 4thfloor: residential spaces 4. 1st to 4th floor: recreation facilities 3. 1st and 2nd floor: workspaces 2. groundfloor urban lobby 1. groundfloor public park, circulation, car parking and public transport

59

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2. 2.

1. 1.

Urban Projects / Net

60

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A day in the life of a worker

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61

1. Group workspace / 2. Mixed workspace / 3. Workspace / 4. Housing / 5. Soho / 6. Bachelor quarter / 7. Restaurant / 8. Lounge / 9. Hotel / 10. Theatre / 11. Cafe / 12. Library / 13. Gym

3rd floor

1. Urban lobby / 2. Lobby workspace / 3. Platform / 4. Bush / 5. Pine / 6. Tree / 7. Canal / 8. Car parking / 9. Bank / 10. Enclosed garden

Ground floor

Urban Projects / Net

63

View from Kpenicker Strasse to the river

Working and Living

Urban Projects Points Eunjin Kang Urban Project Points is the project with the most reduced footprint for the City of Knowledge program. Therefore the project allows for the establishment of a large public park where cultural activities can mix in a wide range. The area is completely permeable. Thresholds from the existing city into the site are minimised. The whole site is organised by a series of east-west strips, which run parallel to the river. They define the building positioning principle of the project. The new dense project on the northern part of the river, the Media Spree, comprises a large amount of 22-m and 35-m high perimeter blocks. Points opens a dialog with the northern project and creates a strong spatial answer by positioning five clusters with high-rise buildings up to a height of 70m along the river inside a common domain. Discovery: Once you are in this new urban space, behind the green curtain, you are confronted with a sense of discovery. The continuous surface acts as a carpet, which goes throughout the site and gives an unlimited sensation with different kinds of green-lobbies right in the middle of the city. Water: In this project the social aspect of water is taken seriously. The water canals are the most active and social places outdoors in this project, where the general public could mingle with the workers and residents to use and enjoy the landscape. Observations The possibility to escape within the city is becoming more and more restricted in Berlin. The financial pressure and the lack of money to maintain public parks lead the city to sell large areas of valuable land to private entrepreneurs. Therefore the city loses control of the valuable green areas inside the city boundaries. The realisation of temporary occupancies or other future strategies becomes more difficult. Points introduces a new concept where the private companies buy the rights to build above the common public workspaces inside a very attractive green environment. Their territory starts at 22m. In return the company pays for the maintenance of the park and the urban lobby. The project constitutes a large, green and continuous interiorised urban space inside of the fabric of Berlin, which amplifies the institutional centrality of the place. Here, working and living have valuable interactions with nature, creating a new type of central business district.

64 Architecture and program Workspace: The project provides generic workspaces in the towers and common workspaces in the 35 plinths. Points provides many attractive places of encounter, both in the park and the lobbies. While the lobbies act as temporary workspaces, they also perform as places of interaction. The proximity to the park, together with the broad variety of different environments, improves the workspace through emotional dimensions. The lobbies are the most active and condensed communication spaces of the project. Besides the digital links to other places in the world, communication works here through direct face-to-face meetings, video conferences and presentations. Social encounter: The project provides many attractive places of encounter, both in the park and the lobbies. The lobbies act as temporary workspaces, yet they simultaneous perform as places of interaction and social condensers. The proximity to the park together with the wide variety of different environments improves the quality of working and living through emotional dimensions for the workers, clients, residents and citizens. Urban Lobby: There are two types of workspaces in the project. The generic workspace in the office towers and the common workspaces in each plinth of the 35 towers: The Lobbies. The 35 plinths contain a series of different spatial typologies referring to the multitude of concepts, which differentiate the workspace layout. Together they create a catalogue of choice for the workers who like to work in the park: the Arena, the Podium, the Forest, and more. They are built voids universal places to be filled with spontaneous programme. The 35 lobbies contain temporary workplaces for rent. Openness, with strong visual relationships and different appearances, represents the key spatial issue. Each lobby is designed in such a way that all elements of the park (trees, lakes, and surface) can provide a maximum impact on the interior. The height of each lobby is 22m, which is the equivalent of the Berlin perimeter block. The lobbies of the towers act as reference points for the visitors. They become prominent, easily located places in the terrain. Furthermore the urban lobby comprises a multitude of public programmes, which add to the rich menu for the workers, clients, residents and citizens, from the student to the executive.

65

Urban Projects / Points

66

View from Kpenicker Strasse to park

View through park to Kpenicker Strasse and Spree

676.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

7. services 6. permanent workspaces (red) and residential spaces (yellow) 2. volumes of trees. filter towards Kpenicker Strasse and permeability towards the Spree 1. access from Kpenicker Strasse. to the site, and promenade along the riverfront 5. services 4. urban lobbies: temporary working spaces 3. strips incl. four types of nature; grassland, water, plain, garden, forming a carpet across the site

Urban Projects / Points

68

cafeteria

restaurant

bar

exposition

laundry

wardrobe

archive

01

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25 01 01 5 5 10 10 01 5 01 5 25 10 25 10 10 25 25 25 25

01 5 0 1 10 5