TS 1 is a prototype for a new kind of civic space dedicated to the cultivation of debate. Located on the border between the former runway of Tempelhof Airport and the city, it fosters the mingling of milieus.

Tempelhofer Feld is experienced as the arrival of the sea in the middle of the city. It is characterized by absolute flatness, unobstructed view, and undamped wind across 300 acres. TS 1 stresses the surreal quality by simply laying a carpet on the border between Feld and city. The space underneath the carpet is subdivided into four distinct quadrants. Each of them is allied and opposed to the other ones through a modulation of ground and light, the body posture it provokes, the kind of communication it fosters, and the atmosphere it radiates.

The quadrants allow individual appropriation in non-ending loops: from the arena of polylogues to the hall of improvisation, from the endspace for introspection to the fragmented arena for dialogues. We are reminded that architecture has the power to make us experience time as cyclical, linear, endless, swinging, elapsing, revolving, driven, intense, frozen, encapsulated…


It is this power which transcends a political space into a poetic one. To harness this force for the public good is existential urbanity.
- Did I put it right, Diane?