An Everyday Monument: Architecture as a Frame to Reveal the Historical and Liminal Site

Abstract

The city is a manifestation of culture, containing its history and informing its transformation. Preservation and erasure of the historical city through regulation distances its artifacts and spaces from everyday lived experiences of its users. By creating a metaphorical barrier between user and artifact or space, users are no longer involved in the transformation of the city. Its architecture ceases to serve as an archive for the history of its cultural evolution.

The liminal zone along the former East-West Border in Berlin is one instance of this phenomenon. This thesis analyzes ‘site,’ highlighting aspects of its history and existing conditions through an architectural framing to enable its artifacts and spaces to become part of lived experience. It engages vision and movement in an experiential line of constructed perspective(s) that encourage interaction between user and context. Herein, the architecture of the city becomes again a resource for cultural and physical transformation.