NATO : Network Architecture Tensile Organization : mending Berlin through public interface

Abstract

NATO: Network Architecture; Tensile Organization is a project that seeks to create a lighter public forum where architecture mediates a space of metaphor, yet looks towards a hopeful future, in a place laden with the immensity of a dark past. This project exploits the emblematic condition of connectivity within various paradigms. These states range from international and diplomatic initiatives to the structural integrity of a piece of architecture to infrastructural connectivity and finally to the simple experience of traversing a site. The program and concept are based on an interdependent network where all architectural, programmatic and urban scale constituents are connected in order to foster urban renewal at the site of Mauerpark in Berlin, a place that from 1961 until 1989 was fundamentally divided and incapable of being traversed. The project seeks to define and give meaning to ways to mend a political, infrastructural and architectural scar that has been left on a city while depicting the very real and very palpable condition of the systemic political organization of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Public Diplomacy Division.