Payback – Playground: Private Property Financing the Common Good

Exhibition, Concept

What social tasks can architecture fulfil in big cities like Berlin? What opportunities arise for local actors and residents through the idea of cross-financing?

With the exhibition “Payback – Playground”, bfstudio-architekten provided insights into entire developmental progression of the METROPOLENHAUS. Through its characteristic “active ground floor”, which acts as an impulse generator for urban development in the neighbourhood and as a place for a meeting of cultures, the project attempts to provide possible answers to the above questions.
The exhibition visualised the entire developmental progression of the METROPOLENHAUS, from the development of the neighbourhood around the former Blumengroßmarkt, which were based on urban planning studies on the Mehringplatz area, to the conceptual and architectural planning phase and the temporary interim use of the construction site, and of course the final realisation and opening of the building. In a ten-metre-wide timeline, the development of the project could be traced by means of the five categories: context, politics, architecture, neighbourhood, and programme. At every phase in the development, each category was visualised by a different colour line that drifted together and apart. Decisive stages in the process of realisation were marked by colourful nodes with text panels, photos, and brochures.

In addition, large-format photographs by Sebastian Wells offered personal insights into the private flats of the residents and provided information about the relationships between people and spaces.
Also exhibited as a projection, were neighbourhood projects such as “Kreuzberg klingt” (“Kreuzburg resounds”), which during the interim use of the site also used feldfünf/BaufeldV’s non-commercial project spaces.

A talk was held during the exhibition opening to discuss the central question: “What can the building give to the neighbourhood?

The exhibition was developed + designed by bfstudio-architekten.
Benita Braun-Feldweg, Erica Conner, Katharina Deppisch, Henrik Feindt, and Diego Vasquez