Radius

By re-activating the waterways around Berlin in order to ship agricultural products from the region, Radius:Centre for Regional Products envisions a regional supply chain promoting local economies in the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region. In Berlin, it proposes a central hub, integrating infrastructure, commerce and public space.

Ideally, the ever-increasing social and technological cataclysms force architects to make a decision between two ways of working: Retreat to simplicity or embrace complexity. Whereas the first way’s challenge is not to end up in banality, the second way’s challenge is not to be overwhelmed by content. By dealing with some of today’s most urgent topics within the architectural discourse, such as the relation between countryside and city, the boom of urban logistics in times of globalised e-commerce, the proliferation of logistical landscapes, the rise of gentrification and urban enclaves as well as the re-use of old infrastructures, this project opts for the second way: It embraces complexity. As a result, it takes the challenge to start with a broad and interdisciplinary research and a bundle of different topics on a large scale, in order to eventually end up proposing a precise architectural intervention, without getting lost on the way. That challenge was my primary motivation conceiving and realising this project. Moreover, it allowed me to research and reflect on the above-mentioned topics, perhaps most importantly on the role of city and countryside in times of global distribution and proliferating logistical landscapes.