Don't be a tourist ! : imagining a post-touristification Berlin

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.