About The Project
Using 8-bit computer systems pixels as inspiration, the class was tasked with proposing a small kino (movie theater) to be located within the city of Berlin. Following initial observation of the city and its spaces, I developed an idea for a temporary theater that would change based on its inhabitants. By democratizing the architecture of theater, the project would mimic the ever changing nature of urban life by constantly adjusting and evolving. The final space selection was chosen due to the numerous locations of the Berlin metro and the guaranteed downtime of the system in the late night. This project was completed during a summer study-abroad architecture studio with the Kentucky College of Design 2012.
I worked on this project alone as a studio project in an 8-week summer study-abroad to Berlin. I was responsible for initial site plan analysis, developing the concept, graphic design and layout of boards and a scale foam model.
CLIENT
University of Kentucky
LOCATION
Berlin, Germany
ROLE
Lead Designer
Solution
Three designs of cubes interact with the steps in different ways in order to optimize height and depth to the users preference.The three styles nest together in larger blocks when not deployed for ease of storage.
Planning
The “Berliner Zimmer” is defined as the leftover room typically in the center of a Berlin flat apartment that can serve as a multipurpose room or serve no purpose at all. By observing the urban fabric of Berlin in search of this leftover space, I found myself gravitating towards spaces that change over time. This seemed like an interesting condition to attempt to exploit and that is the direction in which the project moved.
The research for this project began by searching for abstract representations of the Berliner Zimmer (or leftover space) within the urban environment of Berlin.
In the Ideation and Analysis, spaces that change over time were highlighted. In each of these cases, the space drastically evolves depending on the time of day. These “temporary zimmers” exist in the entrances to U-bahn and S-bahn stations, parking garages, markets and restaurants. Following this phase, it was determined that the opportunity with the most potential was the conversion of U-bahn and S-bahn stations.
Selected Spaces: Berlin Metro System
There are over 170 U-bahn and 160 S-bahn stations in Berlin. This offers a huge potential for this installation to positively affect the city. With each station shutting down from 12:00 am to 4:00 am, the kino can be actively deployed in almost every Berlin neighborhood.
