In cooperation with the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing and the Technical University of Berlin, the guidelines for design for all in Berlin’s publicly accessible buildings were brought up to date in a 2-year process and the communication design was further developed accordingly. In the process, exciting new topics such as digitality and cognition were incorporated into the brochure.

The brochure is intended to encourage planners to consider design for all as a future topic in their everyday design work from the very beginning.

The brochure is currently being evaluated and is expected to be published and printed in spring ’22. It can be viewed here in advance as a digitally accessible document. We welcome your suggestions and criticism.

Berlin architectures of the 1980s – comprehensible for all

On the occasion of the exhibition “Anything Goes? Berlin Architectures of the 1980s,” the course “Berlin Architectures of the 1980s – Comprehensible for All” took place in the summer semester of 2020 at the TU Berlin. In a block seminar, design focal points of architecture and urban planning in the 1980s in East and West Berlin were dealt with. Under the direction of Annette Müller and Robert Niemann, 25 students of architecture and stage design/scenic space took part in the events.

Goal

The focus was on finding ways to use models and objects to give all museum visitors a better understanding of the construction activities in both parts of Berlin in the 1980s. Above all, blind and visually impaired persons should be given access to individual aspects of architecture and urban development.

Concept

Seven thematically very different inclusive concepts for tactile models were created. How, for example, does John Hejduk get from the sketch of a fox to the architectural design of the Kreuzberg Tower? Multisensory stations were also developed to convey spatial experiences of the sites Tegeler Hafen, Nikolaiviertel and Friedrichstadt-Palast. A sculpture made of striking elements of postmodern architecture opened up a playful, artistic approach to the topic.

In the further course, the concepts were the basis for the development of working models. These were presented to the project participants, from the museum management to the later users. They discussed on the basis of the examples what should be realized for the exhibition. In order to incorporate the requirements of blind and visually impaired people, self-advocates were involved in the decision-making process.

Implementation

After the presentation, five concepts were selected and implemented in a participatory way with the involvement of the main focus group:

• Return to the “Berlin Block”
• Nikolaiviertel – reference back to history
• Quotations from history
• Diversity in unity
• Mother and child friendly apartments

The cooperation project was also about raising awareness among students. In the project, they had the opportunity to get to know the concept of design for all in practice and to understand this as a self-evident design and planning task.

In the exhibition

In the exhibition “Anything Goes? Berlin Architectures of the 1980s” the tactile models provide all visitors with a multi-sensory experience. They convey essential urban and building concepts of the 1980s. Background information can be accessed via the visitor’s own smartphone. A screen reader enables the texts to be read aloud. Attention fields on the floor point out the stations. In addition, all exhibition texts are available as brochures in large print. Tactile tours with descriptions of the buildings, audio examples and interviews complement the offer.

A project of the Berlinische Galerie in cooperation with Modell+Design, Technische Universität Berlin

Link to the cooperation on the website of the Berlinische Galerie

Press release

We are very pleased that our cooperative project “Mikrowohnen barrierefrei” has won 1st prize in the category of faculty projects in this year’s competitionline campus 2021 and would like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved in the project and our students for their joint project work. Very special thanks go to Ingeborg Stude and Maike Pischke from the Coordination Office for Barrier-Free Planning and Building of the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment as well as to the Central Workshops of the TU Berlin, without whose commitment a realization would not have been possible.

Link to the article on the competitionline website

What is the smallest possible barrier-free housing unit?

This was the question of a seminar at the Technical University of Berlin in the subject Model+Design. The aim was to push accessibility as a self-evident building task, to sensitize students and raise their awareness of the issue of accessibility, and at the same time to emphasize the need for diversity and flexibility, especially in housing construction.

Rising real estate and rental prices, an increase in single households and a growing number of elderly people are factors that demand new approaches from planners and builders, and not only in Berlin. In the seminar, the integrative approach of co-living offers was elaborated by the students and further investigated in cooperation with the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the Department of Building Economics at the Technical University of Berlin.

Ten very different approaches for a typical Berlin residential building were developed in models and images. A 1:1 scale barrier-free housing unit developed in the seminar forms the core of the exhibition. It was built by the Central Workshop of the Technical University of Berlin, is the object carrier for all models and plans, and is itself an exhibit.

Architecture to touch

As part of the DBSV’s “A Book for Every Day” project with funding from the SKala initiatives, students from Fach Modell+Design created tactile books with exciting architectural themes for children at the beginning of March.

In a compact fourteen-day workshop, 20 students developed eight book prototypes with a great deal of imagination, empathy and expertise.

• There was a little dragon that flew over a large city and got stuck with all the building components. I wonder if the children can help the dragon puzzle roofs, columns, a bridge and the top of the TV tower back into their original places.
• What is the secret of Venice? The children can unravel it, as a book tells how to build a city in water.
• And how do you manage to invite both a mouse and a giraffe to your birthday and fit them all in one room. The mouse tape measure shows if the mouse can get up a flight of stairs, and the giraffe tape measure shows if the ceiling is high enough for the giraffe. Or is the garden the only place left to gather everyone around the birthday cake?
• How does a cat fare when it walks across the roofs of a city? It can climb a gable roof, walk comfortably along a flat roof, but it can’t make it to the top of a high, pointed church tower. Fold-out roofs let her explore their different shapes.
• In another book, children can build an entire house wall by wall and furnish it with small pieces of furniture just the way they like it.
• There is also an exciting world tour through the most diverse house shapes. And the children take a part from everywhere – the roof of an African hut is included in the luggage, as is the ice block of an igloo.
• Finally, each child builds his or her own dream house from the parts, which is also a house for everyone.
• There is even a whole stadium for the Olympics – to be opened as a book. It’s fun to play soccer or tennis in it.
• And can a medieval city be computer-lasered? Yes, at least the wooden pieces from which the children build the city like a puzzle and learn a lot about life in the Middle Ages. This example in particular shows how the students also dealt with a simple production method for 200 copies of each book.

The conclusion of the children’s book team from DBSV:

“We would love to do all the books.”

And choosing a book for production as part of our project will be very difficult. But after 2021, after all, we still want to realize book ideas.

Eva Cambeiro, Christine Rieger and Reiner Delgado from the DBSV children’s book team.