Rosenstein IOCP

Rosenstein - IOCP Institution of Culture Performance I Design Competition by the German Federal Government, Baden-Württemberg

IOCP — Designing a New Cultural Infrastructure for the Future City

As part of the development of the new Rosenstein district surrounding Stuttgart’s newly built central train station, the briefing asked us to create a “third place” — a space beyond home and work where people could gather, interact, and connect.

Rather than designing a singular physical destination, we challenged the briefing itself. We believed the opportunity was not simply to create another public space, but to rethink how cultural infrastructure could shape the mindset of a future society.

This led to the creation of IOCP: a transcultural institution designed as both a physical and digital ecosystem for exchange, learning, interaction, and collective evolution.

At its core, the project explored how design can cultivate new forms of cultural awareness, collaboration, and connection across identities and geographies. We approached the concept from both an anthropological and commercial perspective — envisioning a platform where locals, travelers, artists, researchers, and communities could experience, study, and learn from one another.

By extending the institution into digital space, IOCP became more than a location. It evolved into a borderless cultural network combining spatial interaction, community infrastructure, and platform thinking to support new ways of living and thinking together.

Our work included strategy, conceptual development, branding, UX/UI systems, interaction design, and digital platform thinking. Visually, the identity merged cultural sophistication with futuristic minimalism to create a cohesive experience across physical and digital environments.

IOCP ultimately became a vision for how design can help societies navigate change — positioning transculturality not as a trend, but as the foundation for a new collective future.