Don't be a tourist ! : imagining a post-touristification Berlin
Name
1195920299-MIT.pdf
Size
79.9 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7927ef632f768e31a6edc0fa8f999883
Author(s)
Weber, Patrick Alexander.
Advisor(s)
Mariana IbaƱez.
Alternative Title
Imagining a post-touristification Berlin
Date Issued
2020
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This thesis studies how an emerging form of urban tourism can manifest itself in the city within the section of the Berlin block. Tourists and locals have traditionally been conceptualized as binary, inhabiting separate parts of the city and following their own individual agendas. In recent years however, the rise of the sharing economy and social media is opening new avenues for travel, generating an emerging form of tourist that is more interested in experiencing locality and sites off-the-beaten-path. Along with several forms of part-time city occupants, this new urban dweller embodies both the characteristics of a local and the curiosity of a tourist, thus making it a Semi-Local-Tourist. Berlin is a city that finds itself in an era of post-touristification and is experiencing a high influx of Semi-Local-Tourists and inner-city migrants. Within the context of a highly saturated and tense housing market, both dweller-types are competing for spaces that are located in vibrant, peripheral micro-neighborhoods. This thesis inserts itself into the friction that has risen from this conflict and proposes the design of an urban typology that seeks to mediate between local and tourist. The quintessential Berlin block, which composes most of the micro-neighborhoods fabric and was originally designed as a mixed-use and mixed-class urban typology will serve as the site for this thesis. Operating within the framework of the block allows for new design opportunities that aim to renegotiate the terms on which locals and tourists engage with one another and the city. This thesis thus proposes a new urban architectural typology that puts both locals and tourists under one roof. It challenges traditional conceptions of programmatic organization, temporality, public vs. private, and domestic vs. urban, through the articulation of novel architectural forms and spaces across multiple scales: from a window, to the room, the courtyard, the envelope, the building, and the block.
Description
Thesis: M. Arch., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, May, 2020
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 244-247).
Subjects
Architecture.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
Terms of Use
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