Online exhibition presents 22 landscape architecture projects in Berlin.
The debate about housing construction in Berlin has become more heated. A clever online exhibition has arrived just in time: www.draussen-im-zentrum.de.
At the opening, Axel Klapka, chairman of the Berlin-Brandenburg regional group of the Association of German Landscape Architects, posed the question of what is at stake when construction is carried out under time pressure. “Outside: in the Center” takes you to residential courtyards, owner-builder projects and listed estates that are still on the outskirts of the city today, but may be in the center tomorrow. Philipp Sattler and Stefan Reimann present 22 examples from 19 Berlin offices. Instead of posters, together with graphic designer Oliver Kleinschmidt, they chose an installation on the Internet, a dialog-oriented, expandable format with an aesthetic and programmatic goal.
From new to renewed
Improving the living environment too often means making things worse, says Stefan Reimann. Namely when landscape architects are only asked to carry out what has long been prescribed according to specifications: the location of the garbage bin, rainwater infiltration or fire department access routes. “Here with us, the outside is an extension of the inside,” he promises as curator. Visitors can click through picture galleries and short texts in three sections. “Newly created” is about visionary energy in new construction, realized on conversion wastelands or greenfield sites, where landscape architects draw from the full, for example A24 Landscape Architects in the “Estienne et Foch” barracks in Landau.
Under “Freshly expanded”, the curators collect special features from the entire product range of redensification in existing buildings, from roof gardens to playgrounds, discovered in Hamburg, Wiesbaden or Munich. The garden courtyard of a building community in Berlin-Kreuzberg (Herrburg Landschaftsarchitekten) is dominated by lush plant splendor. In contrast, an inner courtyard in Berlin-Köpenick (Hutterreimann Landscape Architects) has a purist, airy feel with just three ingredients: Lawn, gleditsia and benches made of bright white concrete bars.
Just how transformable open spaces can be is demonstrated by “Rund erneuert”, which uses sites from the 1950s to 1980s and the famous large housing estates of the modern era. These include a Unesco World Heritage Site, the Horseshoe Estate in Berlin-Britz, adapted to the demands of modern times by Henningsen Landscape Architects. The surroundings of a listed student residence in Berlin-Charlottenburg are still unknown. There, K1 Landscape Architects tamed the vegetation, made paths out of beaten tracks, placed seating steps on embankments, created small beds for urban gardening, always with the young residents in mind.
Inspiration desired
Will the exhibition inspire more developers to want more projects beyond zero-eight-fifteen? This was discussed at the vernissage with Reiner Nagel, Bundesstiftung Baukultur and Stefan Schautes, Howoge Berlin. The latter was only too happy to hide behind the selection procedures that are still customary in his municipal company and are considered to ensure quality. Reiner Nagel wants to combine a quality offensive with demands for more money; 30 euros per square meter in public space is not enough. What is needed for such a quality offensive can be found in the essay accompanying the exhibition under the beautiful title “Outside, 09-15”.
