Potsdam's Brandenburger Vorstadt is a socially and demographically diverse district divided by a main street. In the north you can find many young families in beautiful old buildings, living between Sanssouci Park, small shops, restaurants and bars. In the south, old buildings alternate with former barracks and prefabs between the main street and the Havel river. Interviewed residents describe parts of the southwestern area as dreary and they don't see a reasons to go there. Here you also can find the Schillerplatz, a meadow with benches at the train station. Through it's location, it has high potential to connect the different parts and people of the district. But it is hardly used at present.

The project Upgrade Schillerplatz tries to connect residents from the surrounding neighborhoods at Schillerplatz by creating new landmarks and conveying ideas on how to use the given infrastructure. Through a modular system it appeals to different age groups, with different interests and hobbies.

The vision for the project is that Schillerplatz becomes a new center and meeting place for the district, where residents with different ages and social backgrounds can come together, recognice each other and act together. For this purpose, the residents need a reason to go to Schillerplatz, stay there and interact with the place. On the one hand it needs visible infrastructure, so it gets a recognition value. On the other hand it has to be connected with a positive image in peoples minds. These are the two challenges that the project adresses.

The problem of the dreary, uninviting southwestern area of the district and the unused Schillerplatz came up with interviews on the residents most visited places and walking routes. Visualizing these data on the district map showed that Sanssouci Park, the northern neighborhoods with historical architecture and great commercial infrastructure, as well as the riverside were the most popular places to go to. It also emerged that residents from the northern neighborhoods rarely cross the main street to visit the south and when they do, they go to the train station. Many people from these neighborhoods couldn't even describe Schillerplatz or the area around it. 

Interviewed residents of Schillerplatz said they use other recreational infrastructure in the district to play, relax or meet with friends. After observing Schillerplatz it turned out that it's main usage is to be crossed by people who come from or go to the train station. Some teenagers use the hidden benches at the northern area of the square to talk with friends. The other benches are unused. Probably because they are more visible to the environment. Also they face each other and people sitting there could only look at other visitors sitting on the opposite bench. The meadow is completely unused and the rectangular bed makes it even more excluding and uninviting.

The developed solution of the explored problems can be divided in two measures:

1. New infrastructure:
By providing new recognizable infrastructure, dwellers get a reason to remember the place and visit it on purpose. After creating a moodboard, I designed three objects as proposals. First a mixture of a scaffolding and lying surface in the middle of the square to invite people of all ages to access the meadow and get an overview of the area. In combination with surrounding beds the object builds a visual center for the square and avoids people sitting on the surrounding benches to stare at each other. A tube on the western meadow can be used by kids as a multifunctional game object. On the eastern meadow a boccia field can be used to play boccia, inviting also the elderly residents or people in wheelchairs to meet and do sports together.

2. 100 Ways to Use a Meadow:
By setting up wooden inspiration cards in fitting shelves all over the square, dwellers get ideas on how to interact with the given infrastructure as well as the newly built one. Divided in the six categories Sports, Conversation, Relaxation, Activism, Puzzles and Games the cards cover different interests and hobbies. Short informations about duration, tools and amount of people needed for the provided task as well as an age specification leads to target group oriented assignments. Through descriptions, graphics and tipps the activities are explained. Cards provided at the benches include mainly conversational tasks and puzzles, while the shelves at the meadow provide more physical tasks. Short texts on the back of the cards invite to share feedback or come up with new ideas.

After elaborating problems, describing a vision and designing solutions the next step is to build the inspiration cards and shelves as prototypes and to test how they are accepted, used and treated by dwellers. The ideas for new infrastructure and the learnings from the inspiration card's tests could be the starting point to present the project to the city of Potsdam. The concept of conveying ideas for given infrastructure is also adaptable for other places and could be transferred into a growing website. 

After all the project gives an idea on how unused and unpopular places in a district can be found and analyzed. The solution approach is partly universal, partly tailored to Schillerplatz and has to be further reviewed in use.