The Helmholtz Cen­tre in Berlin is one of the most fa­mous re­search cen­tres in the world. 2,500 of the great­est minds in sci­ence con­duct re­search here in the fields of ma­te­ri­als and en­ergy. Moni­teurs and Glaßer und Da­gen­bach land­scape ar­chi­tects drew on these top­ics and trans­formed the un­rep­re­sen­ta­tive dri­ve­way to the re­search cen­tre into a land­scape of waves. Waves are the com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor of en­ergy and mag­netic fields. Here they are ste­lae that guide the vis­i­tor to the re­search cen­tre and, along the way, pro­vide in­for­ma­tion about the cen­tre’s founders, its key ideas and its sub­jects of re­search. The ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem is here a land­mark that not only ori­ents, but deep­ens and builds an im­age in vis­i­tors’ minds. The benches, in­te­grated into the wave struc­ture, in­vite passers-by to stay a while.

With a to­tal area of 300,000 sqm, the listed Air­port Tem­pel­hof build­ing is still one of the largest build­ings in the world. Since it has been closed to air traf­fic in 2009, the build­ing is hous­ing of­fices and event spaces. In 2013, Moni­teurs drew up the con­cept for an over­ar­ch­ing guid­ance and ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem for the ex­te­rior, in­clud­ing the air­field. The plan­ning for the air­port build­ing was im­ple­mented in 2016. The sign fam­ily is sim­ple and ro­bust and in­te­grates well into the pub­lic space. The ex­tremely com­plex ter­rain and ac­cess to it were clearly struc­tured and in­for­ma­tion hi­er­ar­chies were de­vel­oped.

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.