Learning from Potsdamer Platz and Crysis: ARCHITECTURAL INQUIRIES Theories, methods and strategies in contemporary Nordic architectural research.

How is it possible to create a multimodal experience of a new urban space that appeals to all the senses that represent the spirit of the new "Urban Renaissance"?    

This paper will explore some important aspects of the origin and the future of the recreation of city identity, illustrated through the examples of the square of the Sony Center and Potsdamer Platz. Using the Potsdamer Platz and the Sony Center cases as a learning tool in the design process might evoke a new kind of multimodal space representation.

The first part of this paper will look into the history of Potsdamer Platz and the origin of the "Panoptikon". It will discuss the problems and advantages of the architectural, urban, social and philosofical context  of "transparency", as Baudriallard, Focault, Nouvel, and Toyo Ito describe it.

The second part will look into the virtual and actual world of architects such as Marcos Novak, Usman Haque, OMA, and Kas Oosterhuis who create mobile, interactive, sensitive architectural objects for the future, which can interact with the environment and the users.

The third part will look into the intuitive sketch process and the "flow of becoming" based on a series of loops from the analogue to the virtual. This journey through the mind and work of the architect and artist generates a plethora of emotions, experiences and narratives.

The loops are from two workshops, a experimental workshop in experience design in 2007 at the Department of Architecture at Aalborg University, a workshop from the Axis Mundi Studio, the "Crystal Forest" project at the central station area in Aalborg, and a case study on the design process of "the writer's path" and on the rules and design tools in new games such as "FarCry", "Crysis", and "Half Life 2".

The intention of the workshops was to show how art can deliver propositions concerning the architectural design process in the architectural profession. The last part will be an analytical and methodological attempt to interpret, in a hermeneutic perspective, what really happens during the sketch process and the workshops, and based on this unfold a series of methodologies to reinvent, rethink and recreate the future city of Aalborg and other cities.

Keywords: Urban renaissance, panoptikon, transparency, play and interaction.