Quartier Potsdamer Platz

City orientation system

The Pots­damer Platz Quar­ter is one of the most vis­ited places in Berlin. Up to 100,000 peo­ple come here daily to ex­pe­ri­ence the unique mix of shop­ping, en­ter­tain­ment and cos­mopoli­tan flair – many of them are tourists, for whom ori­en­ta­tion around the 68,000 m2 space, in­clud­ing un­der­ground car parks, plays a ma­jor role. Moni­teurs won the com­pe­ti­tion to de­sign the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem with a for­mal and the­matic con­cept: the ra­dial pro­file of the signs is de­rived from the ty­pog­ra­phy of the neigh­bour­hood it­self. All three un­der­ground car parks were given clear des­ig­na­tions and a colour-coded re­struc­tur­ing, which also served to lighten the at­mos­phere of the spaces. Above ground and un­der­ground ori­en­ta­tion sys­tems now seam­lessly over­lap and the graph­ics and con­tent are in­ter­linked.

Pots­damer Platz Quar­ter
Pedes­trian and Car Park Ori­en­ta­tion Sys­tem
Ex­te­rior
Un­der­ground car park sig­nage

Berlin 2013

Client

PPMG Pots­damer Platz Man­age­ment GmbH

Ar­chi­tec­ture
Arata Isozaki
Christoph Kohlbecker
Prof. Hans Koll­hoff
Ul­rike und Wol­fram Wöhr
José Rafael Mo­neo
Renzo Pi­ano
Richard Rogers

Area
68,000 sqm
19 build­ings, 10 streets
2 car parks, 3 un­der­ground car parks

Pho­tos
Ste­fan Schilling

Awards

Iconic Awards 2013
Com­mu­ni­ca­tion – Sign­post­ing Sys­tem
Photo Ste­fan Schilling
Photo Ste­fan Schilling
Photo Ste­fan Schilling
In keep­ing with the over­all de­sign con­cept, a new pic­togram fam­ily was de­vel­oped. An­gled cor­ners and bright colours em­pha­sise the fresh, tech­noid im­pres­sion adopted by many of the build­ings at Pots­damer Platz.

Photo Ste­fan Schilling
Photo Ste­fan Schilling
The un­der­ground car parks were given self-ex­plana­tory names like “Shop­ping”, “Cin­ema/​Ho­tel” and “The­atre”. They re­fer to the places di­rectly above the car parks.
Most peo­ple visit the quar­ter from the north. From fre­quency counts and other mea­sure­ments, sur­veys and ob­ser­va­tions, it is pos­si­ble to draw con­clu­sions about the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem for the area. These con­clu­sions af­fect the de­sign and con­tent of the con­cept, i.e. how vis­i­tors and cus­tomers are guided by the po­si­tion­ing and place­ment of in­for­ma­tion car­ri­ers, as well as the type and amount of in­for­ma­tion.