The center of Berlin remains green

It’s all about a prominent area in Berlin’s historic center: sandwiched between the new Humboldt Forum and the television tower, the Rathaus- and Marx-Engels-Forum are getting a new design. The RMP Stephan Lenzen office has won the competition for the green center of Berlin.

Where the roots of the city of Berlin lie, there will soon be no new construction. The open spaces of the Rathaus-Forum and Marx-Engels-Forum will remain green. However, the area will be given a new design, which will result in a flight of steps leading down to the adjacent Spree. The Berlin Senate Administration invited people to take part in a competition in the spring. After an initial phase, citizens were allowed to have their say. A total of 21 landscape architecture firms then developed their ideas further in the second phase of the competition. The landscape architects from RMP Stephan Lenzen ultimately won over the jury. They proposed a central ribbon that connects listed areas of the Rathausforum with the Marx-Engels-Forum. This green ribbon ends in a large staircase on the banks of the Spree. Opposite, on the other side of the water, the eastern façade of the new Humboldt Forum shines.

The open space in the middle of old Berlin used to be called “Park an der Spree”. As one of the most central green spaces in the Mitte district, it dates back to the Second World War. It damaged the Heilig-Geist-Viertel, which ultimately prompted the GDR leadership to demolish it. Since then, the area between Karl-Liebknecht-Straße in the north, the park by the television tower in the east, Rathausstraße in the south and the Spree in the west has remained undeveloped. For a long time, there was an ensemble of monuments in the middle of the area, but this had to be moved to the north-western edge when the subway was built. The future of the Marx-Engels Forum has been under discussion since the 1990s. The ideas were many and varied. They ranged from the reconstruction of the Heilig-Geist-Viertel to the design of a park at the Marx-Engels-Forum. The latter ultimately prevailed.

Marx-Engels-Forum competition brief

The design of a park on the Marx-Engels-Forum now had to be fleshed out as part of the ideas and realization competition. The participants were asked to engage with the place where Berlin was founded, the historical layers hidden in the ground and the surrounding area. At the end of the long debate about the future of this site, citizens’ guidelines for the future development of the Rathaus Forum and the Marx-Engels Forumwere drawn up . These guidelines state that an open space should be designed that does justice to the dimensions and significance of the location and strengthens the identity of the site. In addition, it should bring the eventful history to life and at the same time enable diverse and intensive uses.

In the first phase, the competition initially asked for a vision and an idea for the entire Marx-Engels-Forum. Only the participants in the second phase had to derive their vision. In addition, they outlined an intermediate state for the year 2030 in the ideas part of the competition. In a third realization part, the concrete implementation for 2024 was then to be shown. This step-by-step approach is based on the intended gradual realization of the project. This will take a long time. Accordingly, the ideas must be based on a clear approach and offer a great deal of flexibility for process-based implementation.

The landscape architects from RMP Lenzen provided the most convincing solution for the new design of the Rathaus- and Marx-Engels-Forum. They designed an open space that is characterized by a striking figure. The plan is to keep the Rathaus- and Marx-Engels-Forum free of buildings. The green space promises a high quality of stay with areas for strolling, relaxing and enjoying spectacular views of the cathedral, Humboldt Forum and television tower. RMP Lenzen is equipping the new space with plenty of greenery and lots of shady trees. But water is also included, which contributes to cooling as well as infiltration areas that fit in with future rainwater management. Overall, the contribution to the Marx-Engels-Forum competition envisages a modern, climate-resilient urban space that enables a variety of uses.

Good things take time

The idea of initially creating a green space in the heart of old Berlin preserves opportunities for future generations. For the near future, the jury recommended that the first prize-winning work by RMP Lenzen be realized. This brings a controversial debate to an end. Hardly any other place in Berlin has experienced more planning and discussions than the Marx-Engels-Forum. But for the building senator, it is clear that the city of Berlin has done the right thing. After the fall of the Wall, it did not rush into planning. Now, against the backdrop of current plans for Alexanderplatz and Molkenmarkt and against the backdrop of climate adaptation and the mobility turnaround, things can be designed in peace.

Would you like to find out more about projects in the capital? We have summarized the next planning steps on the former Berlin Tegel airport site for you.