Choreographing the Civic Performance | Berlin, Germany | Unit 21 | 2025

Crafted from the sightlines of Berlin’s Super Audience and routed in the political nature of performative roles, the New Citizens’ Forum reimagines the relationship between public discourse, civic performance and audience spectatorship. This building project is manifested in the dramaturgical concept of the ‘super audience’ and transforms civic engagement and political debate into an immersive, theatrical act where the boundary between participant and observer is blurred. Both isolated and indirect eye-tracking technology is adopted to capture the users focused interpretation of the site through physical, digital and projected architectural scenes. This subjective diagnosis of the building is then computed into binary gaze precision values and a correlated steam output enacts Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt [alienation effect]. As steam obscures the known visual, an ethereal landscape is created; political conversation, radio broadcasting and viewpoint experience is subsequently shifted, creating a feedback loop of participation and observation.

The New Citizens’ Forum This final film narrates the feedback loop through an iterative dance between architecture, observation, generation, participation and broadcasting – inspired by Brecht’s “Forward Not Forgotten” poem and Verfremdungseffekt.

Operational Plan Drawings Drawings depict inhabitation alongside steam and viewpoint choreography throughout the four architectural clusters: The River Stage, Recording the Super Audience, the Civic Performance and Broadcasting Berlin.

Technical Design Methodology Taking on the role of the architectural dramaturg, each physical space was rendered on a digital plane and eye-tracking was initiated from these ‘audience seats’ that the people of Berlin occupy daily [drawing from P1 theatrical notation research].

Narrative Section Drawing This drawing renders the experience in the New Citizens’ Forum alongside showing technical methodology, whereby the subjective nature of the gaze is computed into binary gaze precision values and then translated into steam generation.

Choreographing The Everyday Life Designing from real life architecture and inhabitation, digital techniques allow the audience to reclaim theatrical power when viewing the seemingly inconsequential actions and movement within the domestic, resulting in a feedback loop of ‘acting’.