Authors: Davide Franchina e Claudio Gerenzani
Tutor: Franco Lattes
Co-tutors: Evelina Calvi e Lidya Re
Politecnico di Torino | Facoltà di Architettura | 2005

Abstract:

“Berlin: city of eternal becoming!”
Our attempt is to develop a real and concrete picture of Berlin through an architectonic reading of its places and monuments, a camera in a position to interpret the real state of Berlin.The starting point is the participation to the competition “international competition for students Berlin 2002” presented by the International Architects Union (UIA) under the sponsorship of the UNESCO and for the occasion of the XXI world wide conference of the architecture which took place in July 2002.

This thesis is divided in three sections:

1. Novel
Subdivided in chapters each one for a different “Bezirk” ( a quarter) of Berlin. A visual and narrative journey.
What it began as a narrative description of the project area was transformed into an immense collection of information about the entire city. Because of the necessity to give order and structure to the material and innumerous input the idea came about to collect travel notes. The continuous comparison with Berlin , the city where opposites can be against each other or come together, has determined a very complex and planned novel.

2. Appendix
Thought as an illustrated bibliography made up of articles extracted from magazines and architectural essays, literature, film, music.

3. Plan
The area in question is located north of Reichstag and directly in the vicinity of Berlin new central station, the Lehrter bahnhof.
The project is meant to be a conclusive integration between the first two sections: novel-appendix.
They give the interpretative key which leads to the bases of the architectural project. During our cognitive tour of the city we tried to rediscover the elements which go with our idea of Berlin.
The emptiness in all its different shades, become a very important element in our research.
The emptiness moves through Berlin, you can see it everywhere as a result of the past war especially in the structure of the buildings.
The main point of our project is Kunsthalle.
Which is already present in the artistic and cultural panorama of Berlin. In our project Kunsthaus captures it’s own definition and dimension and in this way it totally develops the potential of interaction between art and creativity for young artists.
The speed and simplicity in which the buildings can be moved allows personalization of the residence based on the requirements of single artists. This is because they are built using interchangeable containers. It will be up Kunsthalle to prepare and to manage the areas of Land Art of the Green Belt.

The container.
The container will become an ulterior decomposition of the city fragment ,a portion of  the city that is constantly changing  while at the same time It has a trace of past Berlin memories. The inhabited units are planned using minimal amounts of space, in order to more efficiently use the two types of containers Hi20 and Hi40.
The aim of the project is gain the maximum flexibility in the best interest of the residents requirements in an endless expansion.
The new idea is to supply a type of leaflet “depliant”, where several possible solutions are shown, so that the resident will be able to choose the type of room more suitable to their own requirements and to be able to insert it where the customer wishes. The city will be endlessly redesigned.