Abstract:
This research through design is concerned with the historical and ontological role of walls in the articulation of our built environments. Through a design project situated in former East Berlin, it explores tactics to counter social detachment and apathy toward our contemporary urban condition and aims to reverse the perception of walls as infrastructure of limitations to infrastructure of opportunities. It is the assertion of this research that, by obscuring and expanding their conventional role to counter that of simply demarcation, this encourages active agency in the urban drama and stronger participation in the sharing and shaping of the collective experience of architecture. The methodology involved traditional architectural design methods coupled with exploratory writing, concentrating on the following research question: Can a broader spectrum of sociality be managed by an architecture of depth rather than division; one that embeds empathy into its walls and positions the inhabitants within a gradation of spatial condition?
This research through design is concerned with the historical and ontological role of walls in the articulation of our built environments. Through a design project situated in former East Berlin, it explores tactics to counter social detachment and apathy toward our contemporary urban condition and aims to reverse the perception of walls as infrastructure of limitations to infrastructure of opportunities. It is the assertion of this research that, by obscuring and expanding their conventional role to counter that of simply demarcation, this encourages active agency in the urban drama and stronger participation in the sharing and shaping of the collective experience of architecture. The methodology involved traditional architectural design methods coupled with exploratory writing, concentrating on the following research question: Can a broader spectrum of sociality be managed by an architecture of depth rather than division; one that embeds empathy into its walls and positions the inhabitants within a gradation of spatial condition?