left | Through a process of drawing, we speculated how one would navigate the garden; paths that take them there and what architectures may occur along the way. right | Through a process of modeling, we tested terrain heights, choosing what features of the park we may want to exaggerate or obscure.
drawn | Opting to preserve the ecology with a low-impact approach, we envisaged a series of small interventions that would sit in available space amongst the trees.
As part of Willy Alverdes 1950's design for Tiergarten, a tree-felling program was scheduled for the 1980's, devised to decimate the faster growing pioneer species such as poplars and birches so the slower growing oaks and beeches could thrive. However, in the 1970's, management executives from the Berlin House of Representatives canceled the program. As a result, Tiergarten has developed an exceptional biodiversity, containing dense groves, once, not easily accessible to people.
In 2012, new park management policies worked to "tame" Tiergarten, making these groves more spatially accessible to the public to discourage anti-social use. Despite its humanitarian successes, trees and bushes - the breeding environment for owls, falcons and nightingales - have been put at risk. The unfortunate fate of the groves in Tiergarten has created an opportunity for the proposals to build around the thickets that remain, protect them and encourage the growth of new ones. By designating humans in a separate raised path, the space can still be enjoyed whilst managing the requirements for all - master-map originally drawn at 1:2000.
Extg water
Extg fine gravel
Extg coarse gravel
Extg Mulch
Proposed plantations to existing clearings (development zone)
Proposed development zone
drawn | In the larger clearings, the land can be used to create sports pitches which are conveniently sound-screened by the surrounding trees. Master-map originally drawn at 1:2000
left | 1:100 fragment models testing the architectures appearance and composition when organized into a collection.
right | In an exercise of photo montage, we continued to rearrange the architectures for this opportunity of intervention.
DEVELOPMENT ZONE
DEVELOPMENT ZONE
EXISTING TREE TRUNK
EXISTING TREE TRUNK
Design lines introduce a compositional connection between individual architectures
left | Our methodology for inhabiting existing forest clearings. right | Raised jettys spanning between the pavillions within Tiergarten creates closed off areas to be used as managed gardens for the planting of bushes for birds, installation of bird boxes, stacking of log piles and other methods to improve the biodiversity lost to the recent works undertaken in Tiergarten. Plan originally drawn at 1:200 @ A2.
Information Gate
Courts Gate
WC/Showers/Changing
Bridgehouse
Bridgehouse
Badminton Lending Library
Basketball Lending Library
Cycling Lending Library
Football Lending Library
Hockey Lending Library
Lacrosse Lending Library
Rugby Lending Library
Squash Lending Library
Volleyball Lending Library
Wearable Tech Lending Library
Basketball Court
Squash Court
Tennis Court
left | Existing forest clearings (marked tree locations) and connecting design lines form the basis of the site model. The forest clearings are staked by the tree trunks, represented in the model as abstracted white posts.
pictured | 1:500/ 1:2000 proposed site model
right | The model follows two scales across its two stratas. The contours are at 1m intervals and are accurate according to SAR DEM data, extracted from QGIS.
"When we started selecting plants in 2011, we didn't yet know Willy Alverdes' original plant list. That's why we chose plants that suit the location, are easy to grow and, ideally, make a good impression in the first year. We were guided by the image of the steppe, i.e. waving grasses and bright bulbous plants in spring. While researching in the parks department, Bernd Krüger found the planting list from 1953. From this we learned that Alverdes combined wild plants such as thorny hackle, sea rye, ivory thistle and Caucasus catnip with deep blue bearded irises and bright red park roses." 5
pictured | The initial design movewithin the Schonberg neighbourhood was to make literal folds of selected block to form new urban masses that are centred within the blocks, creating space around the outer edge for plantations. Equally, this would create an opportunity to exposing greenery that is currently hidden by the terraces which stand around 24 meters in height on average. In what we called a 'degrowthing methodology', we imagined he blocks could be folded on an axis'.
left | In a drawing entitled 'Cultivating Berlin', we imagined the buildings as cultivatable artefact's that could be freely moved and clustered.
centre | We overlaid the pieces of the typical Schöneberg block over our newly formed masses, imagining the land around it to be space for trees in a radical move.
right | To hone the de-growthing methodologies we conspired, we created card models as a means of scaling, reflection and testing.
[1] Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn
[2] Elevated railway
[3] T-Labs (of T-Mobile), a well known R&D department of Deutsche Telekom in the telecommunications industry.
The building is recognizable for its tall telecoms tower
left | Before developing specific blocks in a higher level of resolution we made a:1000 model, envisioning how the architectures could occupy multiple blocks in terms of their massing.
Having preserved all of the trees in the Tiergarten scheme, we tested the viability of fitting the architectures between them.
[4] Pallaspark, a classic example of Zeilenbau, a bauhaus concept of linear blocks, usually orientated on the northsouth axis. The building oversails the street Pallasstraße
[5] Potsdamer Straße
[6] The site of Components of the Craft
[7] The red indicates either existing openings, or openings to be created to make the blocks 'fully porous'
[8] UBulowstraße U-Bahn
[9] Amerikanische Kirche in Berlin (American Church in Berlin, an Evangelical church
bottom | Despite our endeavour to preserve all of the trees within the blocks which was sucessful in Tiergarten, this posed a design challenge as it couldn't realistically be achieved with the density of trees and the root protection areas, and access to light they would realistically require. Recognising this collision between human intervention and nature, we iterated our paper maquettes, taking on a more fluid form; weaving and in some cases capturing trees into an elongated spine.
Rise of the 'rental barracks': The residential building model of an industrialized Berlin
The 1862 Berlin Extension plan, also known as the 'Hobrecht plan', is remarkable in its efficieny. Extracting the public, private and the street, the plan meanders around the cities urban centre. The primary structure are the streets, with their simple rectilinear patterngliding over the existing ground from the drawings edge to edge. The grids are the secondary structure, appearing in different shapes and sizes, spanning across its arteries and radial boulevards.
The plan underlies much of Berlin's current urban layout, and in particular the perimeter block development. Despite the poignancy of James Hobrecht's city planning innovations, the plan failed to keep up the momentum with the city's vigorous growth, and the specifications were soon overhauled to meet the demands of the industrializing Berlin. Interestingly, legislation meant that builders were forbidden to build above the TraufhÖhe , and so, lead to the extraordinary depths that the inner city buildings achieved. Nineteenth builders exercised their full freedom and thus popularised the courtyards. According to the building inspection regulations of 1897 to which the blocks were built to, the inner courtyards had to only meet one requirement: to allow a 17.5 feet fire engine to turn between each dwelling.
From 1850 to 1871, the population has risen from 400,000 to 800,000; thirty years later there was already 2 million people living and working in Berlin6. The exponential growth catalyzed the creation and intensification of apartment buildings, shaping the characteristic urban corridors.
Around the same time as the popularization of perimeter block development, the German residential building model of the GrÜnderzeit became widespread. At four to six stories in height with a basement below, they merged public and private - a forward thinking approach now emplored by 21st century urban planners such as David Sim. The commercial spaces were located on the ground floor of the front building; the owner and administrator on the
first, second | Berlins's rise as an industrial metropolis has spawned the new species of building, the Berlin Block. At no limitation in depth, they often feature multiple inner courtyards, creating hundreds of thousands of workers and professionals a place to live as quick as possible
third | A typical plan of an apartment block, sometimes lavishly fitted with bourgeois decoration if paired to an equally elaborate façade.
fourth | A row of backyards shown between each house, 17.5 feet apart to meet with the Building Inspection Regulations of 1897. The photo taken of the Mietskaserne (tenements) puts the sense of proximity into its distinctive perspective.
[1] the Berliner Zimmer - a large room that, despite its size, only has a single window that faces the courtyard and therefore has little light - primarily found in the city of Berlin.
first floor; civil servants and white-collar workers above them, and retirees and workers were in the rear7. . The clean division between residential and commercial so elegantly and simply presented in the 1862 plan failed to take on in the rapidly expanding metropolis. However, the emegence of the perimeter block did, and it was combination with the approach of public and private layering that remains unique and prevalent. Despite the wholesale employment of the Hobrecht plan and its architectural component (also called The Berlin block). Its reception has been somewhat rejected- Hobrecht himself, regressed, stating that it created prison-like inner courtyards with a "lack quality of sun, light and air for the backrooms".
Despite the strengths and weaknesses, the legacy of the 1862 plan formed the inner courtyards and much of Berlins' charm: an urban structure that persists to the present day. An idea that we seek to take inspriration from in theorizing a new approach for the everday Berliner in the 21st Century.
Captitalizing on the opportunites that The Berlin Block invites, we estalished an urban protocol: a process for intervening the blocks in a less radical method than our initial folding study aforementioned, but one that remains true to our intentions to make improvements rather than extensive demolitions. At the heart of our discussion was what we called the Schoneberg Paradox: the urban structure is totally at odds with its history of nightlife, celebration and inclusivity as the 'core' of its community is concealed their its own architectures. The courtyards aren't able to fully draw the space of the street into them and the blocks have a lack of forgiveness. Although they are already be semi-permeable (unlike blocks that are entirely enclosed such as those in the West End of Edinburgh, for example), their openings are irregular, lack organisation and don't appear on all sides of each block. We propose to create a ground floor aperture on the flank of each block to allow views into the inner courtyards from the street with the aim to reactivate the streets of Schoneberg. The further intention is to allow more light and air to bleed into the couryards, and to enrich them with more human and non-human participants.
1. Urban grain
5. Tree Locations
We identified the location of every tree along our focus tangent.
2. Green urban cores
The urban blocks are characterized by their green centre.
3. Green corridors
The urban protocol aims to activate the neighbourhood by making selected ground floor demolitions and to expose the green cores to the city.
4. Selected ground floor conversions
The footprint of the ground floors are divided into into three units. The ground floor is underpinned and structurally reinforced and converted to form two inward facing commercial units (red). Apavillion of equal-size to the central footprint (yellow) remains.
6. Architectural Exchangesubstitution pavillions
Pavillion with an equal-footprint is specified in each block to substitute the footprint that is lost by demolition
7. Coexistance
The pavillions are seeded amongst the trees. The proposals are sized as to not require the removal of any trees.
8. Seeding Berlin - Lending Libraries
Lending libraries to house the exchange of sport and music are seeded amongst the trees. and substitution pavillions. In the same fashion, proposals are sized as to not require the removal of any trees.
"In the centre of the city, the apartment buildings are massed like fortresses. For the most part they are built in squares enclosing an inner courtyard, each with a chestnut tree in the middle. When the top of one of these chestnuts begins to move gently, residents can assume that a force six to eight gale is sweeping along the streets outside"8
