Double Standards

Based on our proposal „Tempelhofer Feld Unchained“ for the ideas competition on the careful development of Tempelhofer Feld, we extract the subsequence “New Construction of Residential Towers” and focus on it in a conceptual further development. The contribution consists of an image of a construction site sign at the edge of the THF, advertising a future, fictional project, as well as the corresponding project description.

In doing so, the never-realized competition entry “Wabe” by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1922—originally conceived as a high-rise building at Friedrichstraße station—is recycled and translocated directly onto the parking areas northwest of the airport building (outside the designated competition site).

The design, considered an unbuilt manifesto of Modernism, is intended to stand humbly at the edge of the THF for the benefit of the city’s residents, serving as a future manifesto for an ecological, inclusive, social, and sustainable urban and housing policy.

In addition to the topic of how building takes place, the project discusses the choice of location for future developments. Parking areas that are becoming obsolete, already sealed, and connected to existing infrastructure seem more sensible to us than publicly used park spaces.

As a conceptual approach, we fictionalize the perspective of a real estate development company that, in a near future, aims to market the project “Double Standards.”
The construction site sign has evolved from a normative information carrier into a narrative medium for speculative, future living environments. As a physically manifested object in urban space, it virtually foretells the architectural future of its site.

We want to use the sign’s inherent claim-making to project a utopian scenario into an apparent reality. The design and installation of the advertisement board—typically created by those who profit from it—is reinterpreted as an act of subversive appropriation for a project that aims to pose more questions than provide answers.

With „Tempelhofer Feld Unchained„, we developed our guiding principle for engaging with Tempelhofer Feld: to identify existing potentials and make them accessible to everyone. In doing so, we examine not only the parking areas in front of the building, but also the possibilities for new pathways, the existing structures on the field, the main building, and—last but not least—the many actors already on site who shape the field into what it is today.

For:
Land Berlin
Competition, Open Call

With:
Thomas Bohne