Märkisches Vier­tel is an ur­ban quar­ter in Berlin, a large hous­ing es­tate with al­most 40,000 res­i­dents, cov­er­ing a space of 3.2 square km, the ori­en­ta­tion of which is dif­fi­cult. In 2006, Moni­teurs worked closely with this city dis­trict and de­vel­oped, un­der con­tract of Gesobau AG, an ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem for sev­eral groups of apart­ment blocks. In 2013, the dis­trict au­thor­ity of Reinick­endorf held a com­pe­ti­tion to de­velop a new ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem, which Moni­teurs won. Dur­ing the ini­tial phase, Moni­teurs con­sulted closely with the Berlin of­fice PSY:PLAN, so that the pro­ject would achieve suc­cess both ar­chi­tec­turally and in terms of psy­cho­log­i­cal per­cep­tion.

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.

Moni­teurs not only de­signed the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem in­side, but also out­side the build­ing – from the signs for foot pas­sen­gers and cy­clists to the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem for the car parks. The con­sis­tent ap­pli­ca­tion of a sin­gle graphic con­cept cre­ates a uni­form ap­pear­ance for the en­tire air­port site. The pic­togram fam­ily icons were ex­panded to in­clude site-spe­cific lo­ca­tions such as the vis­i­tor cen­tre and the Air­port City.