ABSTRACT
His initial interest in devising a user-friendly platform for public consultation stems from his experiences when, in the nineties, he sat through interminable inquiries first in the Bauforum in Rotterdam and then at the Leipzigerplatz/Potsdamerplatz competition consultations in post-Cold War Berlin. In the latter, workshops were held to determine the competition ground rules for a medley of international architects who would eventually create a new urban hub to repair what had remained a World War Two bomb-flattened site – a sad motif of a once divided city (see pages 73-4). Alsop remembers that these sessions were conducted in German, totally theory-centred and, running for six or so hours at a time, at which even the German delegates were bored out of their skulls.
