Urban Weave Could Transform Europe's Coolest City

Berlin is a special place (and this is coming from a Parisian, so you know it must be true). I mean, where else can you barbecue in public parks? Just try to light a match in Paris' Jardin des Tuileries. Berlin’s reputation as the most laid back European capital West of Moscow, filled with art galleries, young creative minds and hip bars/clubs has perhaps reached a new apex. And this refreshing, laissez-faire lifestyle is partly due to the specific urban landscape of the city—large and spread out enough to make it green and lower housing costs, and with a smart combination of architectural styles from various time periods.

It’s against this unique backdrop that Lionel Michel and Roland Heuger created Urban Weave, an architectural intervention that perfectly matches the mix of tradition and modernity that’s at the core of what makes Berlin so Berliny.

These two students of the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences—respectively French and German—have teamed up to illuminate and dress up the Schlossplatz, a large square in the city center that’s been empty ever since the destruction of the Palast der Republik, the former parliament of East-Berlin. So far, the interactive design and architecture duo has created a scale model of their project that gives us a fair idea of what it could look like, but it remains only a concept for the time being.

Urban Weave is an interactive installation that will allow passersby to re-shape the space they are crossing. The setup is built upon a grid of rotating pylons connected via electroluminescent wires that are controlled by the movements of the public. The miniature prototype is made of 18 independent engines controlled with Processing. The result is a global deformation of the structure that looks like a tiny lightning earthquake.

At press time, the city board is still discussing the project, and we can only hope that the public authorities will get a chance to experience it in the flesh, and that Berlin will stay that cool haven all the young artistic souls are dreaming about.