Public@INFO seeks to create a center, the Infobox, for mediating the changes of the development at Lehrter Bahnhof during the upcoming construction period and involve citizens and visitors early on to participate in what will evolve into one of Berlin’s major infrastructure and city center points in the future. The intention to create there a 21^st century city quarter, which would be the first 4G (fourth generation) wireless virtual community in Germany, including train-station, hotel, offices, residential and retail spaces etc. needs to be considered.

BERLIN>DUBAI

The Infobox at Potsdamerplatz built by architects Schneider & Schumacher in 1995, was a temporary and successful precedent with the goal to keep not only residents, but also international visitors “up to date” on one of the biggest building projects in city history. Since the studio project is intended as an architectural commodity ready to flexibly fit different environments, we will look into several sites, such as Berlin and Dubai, and confront the effect onto the design and production. The infobox is not thought of as a modernist kit-of-parts, but more like a contemporary branded product design and a result of industrial mass-customization. Students will develop a building that is fabricated with latest technologies to perform in different situations and which is able to respond to dynamic client needs and flexible program conditions. Student teams will conceive building prototypes, to be manufactured out of prefabricated components similar to the car-aircraft industry in order to establish ways for modularization, re-combination and formal variation through changes in size and shape. Students will get interested into material behavior and combined structural effects and how they link to design techniques and innovation with fabrication.

The site’s importance within a constantly evolving urban fabric and its dynamic relationship to other nodes within the city should be made transparent with a “platform”. The project platform/s will be present in both “real” worlds, a temporary structure in actual space and an info-forum in virtual space.
The actual space (physical building) and the virtual space (web-site), both will allow for information, meeting and exchange, marketing, sales, construction supervision, presentations and contemplation. Each of the programmatic “rooms” are represented in both worlds and equipped for interaction.
The task is to create a temporary building as an interactive environment that merges the two worlds such that it allows the visitor to experience a fluid transition from one world to the other. On the other hand, a visitor to the web-site will find an organizational principle similar to the physical building. The structure/ interface allows anyone to “browse” or navigate through the building and access the “rooms” to participate on-line.