Future perfect : reintegrating housing and production in the Berlin Block/

Abstract

The beginning of the 21st century has been marked by an apparently ubiquitous state of crisis, which transcends national boundaries and is reshaping global relationships. Financial meltdowns, the lack of affordable housing, the decline of manufacturing, resource scarcity and global warming - we seem to be immersed in a state of constant emergency, which offers opportunity for design. Architecture has the ability to play a critical role in the reimagination of an alternate future explored through the discourse of Utopia. Investigating mixed-use strategies of both, the past and present, this thesis proposes a new block typology that intrinsically links the production of goods with issues of resource scarcity and the need for affordable housing as a counter-proposition to the planned Media-Spree Development in Berlin. Reconsidering the history of the urban block in relation to the rise and fall of industrial manufacturing in Kreuzberg, Berlin the project excavates parts of its archaic typologies as a possible way to move forward in the future.