Conditional Publics

The system is fictional, but its logic is not. The question is not only how this system makes us feel, but what it reveals about the spaces we already accept.

Methodology and Design Decisions

The starting point for this project was Görlitzer Park in Berlin. I pass through the park almost every day by bike, and over time I started to notice how the measures taken by the city seem to push some of the most vulnerable people even further to the margins of public life. For me, the construction of fences is not a social solution. It treats complex social problems as questions of space, order, and control. A park that should be open to everyone becomes something that is managed, limited, and increasingly conditional. What also stood out to me was the way people affected by homelessness, addiction, migration, or poverty are often discussed in public debate. They are talked about rather than talked with. They are framed as a problem to be removed, instead of as people who need support, care, and better social conditions. This project starts from that observation. It uses exaggeration, extrapolation, and critical design to ask where these logics could lead. What if public space did not become more open, but more controlled? What if exclusion was no longer hidden in benches, fences, and rules, but calculated and personalized?
I began by looking at existing forms of hostile architecture and how public space is already regulated through design and infrastructure. From there, I translated these logics into a speculative system: informal social judgement became a calculated score, and access to public space became a temporary, machine-readable permission. The visual development focused on objects that feel slightly futuristic, but still familiar from existing systems of control and access: public transport, borders, ticket validation, and regulated urban spaces. I worked with scanners, tickets, terminals, benches, and interfaces because they already carry the visual language of permission, movement, and restriction. I first sketched out how the park system could work and how the different components would relate to each other. From there, I created a system overview to define the main interactions.
After that, I started building the objects in Blender. It took many iterations to find a version I was satisfied with. Some versions looked too futuristic, some too bulky, and others too unrealistic. All machines were designed to feel familiar. I did not want the project to look like a distant, futuristic tech scenario, but like something that could almost exist today. I built parts of the objects myself but also used existing Blender assets. The images below show my original Blender renders. The images above (in the project) are ChatGPT-assisted visualizations based on these renders. I chose to do it like this, to make the scenes appear more realistic and atmospheric. The underlying concept, system, and object designs are my own.
The system uses a physical, temporary pass to emphasize that access itself is temporary. At first, I considered using facial recognition or a similar invisible identification system, but that felt too futuristic and too detached from everyday experience. The pass makes the process tangible. It can be issued, held, inserted, checked, lost, or expire. It also suggests that access is not a permanent right, but something granted for a limited time.
I wanted the project to remain close enough to reality so that it could almost be argued for as a “solution” to existing problems. That is why the machines are relatively subtle and not designed to look openly threatening. Whether they still feel intimidating is something each viewer has to decide for themselves.
The scanner is placed at the entrance because it turns entering the park into a moment of evaluation. However, the entrance is not physically gated. Anyone could walk past the machine, similar to open metro systems where validation is expected but not always physically enforced. The risk is not immediate physical prevention, but later control, punishment, or exclusion.
The scanner does not explain itself. It assumes that everyone already knows what it is for and how they are expected to behave around it. This was important to me because many systems of control work exactly like that: they become part of everyday life until people stop questioning them.
The bench and lawn surface extend hostile design into a responsive system. They do not permanently deny use, but grant comfort only under certain conditions. One could even argue that this is more “humane” than a hostile bench that prevents lying down completely. In this system, the bench appears to offer an opportunity — but only after evaluation, permission, and time limitation.
The worthiness score is deliberately not explained. No one knows exactly what it calculates or how decisions are made. This uncertainty is part of the system. It creates a situation where people are expected to adapt their behaviour without fully knowing the rules.
The language of the system is deliberately neutral and administrative. Terms such as “access level”, “validity”, and “reassessment” make exclusion appear procedural, governmental, and almost reasonable rather than violent. This contrast was important to the project: the system does not need to look brutal in order to be controlling.
The most challenging part of the project was finding the right distance between realism and critique. The system had to feel believable enough to be uncomfortable, but not so believable that it would read as an actual proposal. I originally wanted to develop more objects within the park. The bench, lawn terminal, and Temporary Citizen Pass could be expanded into a larger system of conditional infrastructures: toilets, fountains, shelters, charging points, playgrounds, or shaded areas. For this version, I focused on a smaller set of objects, but a next step would be to explore how a whole public environment could be redesigned around conditional access.