The Topological Stoa was designed to be included in a larger urban planning project designed by Michael Bell, Lars Lerup, Antonio Lao, William Green, Michael
Project
Palmore and Timothy Rempel. The Topological Stoa was one of six buildings designed to occupy what was formerly known as No Man’s Land. Produced in
Client
1988, the work was a proposal to reuse and transform a segment of Berlin’s No Man’s Land. The AEDES Gallery in Berlin funded the proposal as part of a
Program
citywide set of exhibitions funded under the Berlin, Cultural City of Europe program. At the time it was fantastic in scope but in light of what happened in
Site
Germany in 1991 it no longer seems so. We saw in the unusual situation along the Berlin wall the opportunity to create meaning primarily through difference, but
Date of Design
maybe more importantly through the radical transformation of existing types placed in a newly created urban context. We saw the inevitability of the city grid, the
Current State of Project
perimeter block and its associated planning logic as a threat to the rejuvenation of the city and instead proposed a continuos park and a new habitable
Budget
boulevard, almost accidentally strewn with new building types. Here was an opportunity to return to the city as a street. Vehicular flow patterns were sabotaged in favor of the pedestrian and the block was atomized into a collection of buildings — an implosion of new plaza inside a giant street. On the urban level the project is a team effort and as such it may not appear quite complete. It was not really supposed to. Each building was carefully and independently designed, but the possibility of chance was given free reign in the urban design. The Topological Stoa, like the Blue House and the Double Dihedral House was in effect a continuos surface that folded in on itself to form an ambiguous interior and exterior space. This work is explicated in the essay Having Heard Mathematics.
Berlin Stoa
Name AEDES Gallery, Berlin Stoa, Theory Project
No Man’s Land, Berlin 1988
$1,500,000
Designed