Designing Parks

Contents

4 8 11

LEONARD GROSCH / CONSTANZE A. PETROW

Parks for People ROBERT HAMMOND

Parallels

LEONARD GROSCH

Learning from Gleisdreieck

12

Pictures in My Head: What Drives Me

15

Park am Gleisdreieck: Design Strategies

16

Location—A Need for History

21

Framework—Stability and Orientation

27

Program—Activity and Community

32

Multilayered Coding—Everyday Usability and Self-Realization

40

Stage and Stands—Great Cinema

43

Scale—Security and Freedom

46

Types of Nature—Wildness and Design

49

Detail—Precision and Sensuousness

53

Atmospheres—In the Middle of Things and Truly Outdoors

59

Outlook: It Continues!

65

Park am Gleisdreieck Facets of an Open Space in Berlin

151

CONSTANZE A. PETROW

Designing Parks as Lively Places

154

Landscape Architecture as Urbanist Discipline

156

The Performative Approach

159

A Look Back: Parks in Modern Times

162

Designing Parks as Lively Places—Twelve Essentials

163

1. Develop with Multiple Voices

165

2. Design Complexly

168

3. Program Intensively

172

4. Position Cleverly

174

5. Fulfill the Promise of Nature

177

6. Tell Stories

180

7. Find and Strengthen Images

182

8. Interweave It with the City

185

9. Facilitate Appropriation

188

10. Be Welcoming to All

190

11. Vary Degrees of Publicness

192

12. Continue Enhancing Together

194

Conclusion: Parks for the Open City

197

FRIEDER BECKMANN/MEIKE HAKEN/ANTONIA MUSCHNER

A Park Full of Atmospheres

The Perception and Production of Atmospheres in the Park am Gleisdreieck

214

Bibliography

216

Imprint /Image credits

Parks for People “To this day creating a contemporary kind of park remains one of the most difficult tasks for our profession.” GÜNTHE VOGT

U

rban societies are currently undergoing profound change. They are becoming more diverse in terms of ethnicity and culture, as well as older.

Urban milieus and lifestyles are becoming increasingly differentiated, and inequality between rich and poor is also growing. For good and relaxed coexistence, lively and integrative public open spaces are hence more important than ever. They represent an efficient and also comparatively inexpensive way to foster living together peacefully in cities. “Efficient” in this context means the ability to attract various segments of the population, facilitate diverse uses, and thus offer a lively location with a laid-back and safe atmosphere. It is first such a location that enables an essential moment in urban life to occur: encounters between strangers.

In many landscape architecture projects of the last two decades—and in particular those that developed from competitions—questions about aesthetic style and the goal of originality of form were raised before questions about potential utilization possibilities and the quality of spending time at the location. Images suitable for publication were given precedence over how a location performed as a public space. Appropriateness for everyday life was subordinated to suitability for events. Consequently, the market was given priority over the interests of the public—both the market of attention within the field1 as well as the economic exploitation of urban spaces as part of business-oriented urban development policies. In such cases, landscape architects did not only pursue their own concepts of value; they also reacted to the developers’ desires. As a result, however, not only the social and psychological but also the political aspects of urban open spaces—their ability to contribute to integration in society, social stability, and a vibrant public life—were often given short shrift.

Some years ago, Wulf Tessin initiated an important debate on the aesthetic preferences of park users, preferences that conflict with many contemporary designs.2 The controversy that followed obscured the political explosiveness of a landscape architecture that satisfies itself and is understood by designers above

1 See Franck, Ökonomie der Aufmerksamkeit. Ein Entwurf; 2 Tessin, Ästhetik des Angenehmen. Städtische Freiräume zwischen professioneller Ästhetik und Laiengeschmack

4

Designing Parks

all as an aesthetic object. Public spaces that are not designed explicitly with the goal of attracting people and being able to be used intensively in day-to-day life often remain bleak and empty—and hence do not do full justice to their possibilities as urban meeting places. Since the terrain of design in German landscape architecture was won back in the nineteen-nineties and the ecological aspects of open spaces have come to receive new attention as part of society’s growing perception of climate change since the naughts, it is now once again necessary to focus on the social role of landscape architecture.

For this reason, this book does not address questions of aesthetics first and foremost but rather the social performance of open spaces. How is it possible to succeed in making a park or square “buzz”? How is it possible to get as many people as possible to visit it because it promises relaxation, variety, and surprises and because it celebrates the grandness of life in the city? Through seeking to answer these questions, in a certain sense, this book supplements the book Open(ing) Spaces: Design as Landscape Architecture, published in 2003. That publication communicates to students the tools for spatial design in landscape architecture— it shows how one designs spaces. But how does one create places?

We are therefore interested in the possibilities for making open spaces stages for urban life—stages that are used intensively and have meaning for people. We call this a “performative approach.” Addressing the human scale and creating urban spaces filled with life, as Jan Gehl propagates for architecture and urban development,3 are by no means things that happen automatically in landscape architecture, either. “If your goal is to create a place … a design will not be enough,” the Project for Public Spaces notes.4 Landscape architecture can be more than conceptually original and at the height of its time in terms of form. To be so, design must moreover comprise both a strong aesthetic, spatial concept and a sophisticated idea of a location as a social space: an idea of what uses a design facilitates, what atmospheres it allows to arise, and what settings for encounters and shared experiences it offers. What is therefore concerned are correlations between form and use, program and liveliness, design gesture and the popularity of a location, between identification and possibilities to participate. And, naturally, what is always involved is the question of how it is possible to succeed in making people feel happy in open spaces. This requirement should also be accompanied by the awareness that people interpret not only the messages of an overall design but also the subtext of materials and 3 Gehl, Cities for People; 4 www.pps.org, accessed July 23, 2015

Parks for People

5

Parallels Greeting by OBET HAMMOND, Initiator of the High Line Park in New York

T

he parallels between the High Line and the Park am Gleisdreieck are striking, from the use for railway transport and subsequent decline, followed by grassroots campaigns to save the spaces, and finally to the integration of planned and wild space for the public to enjoy. Both were opened in sections, slowly unveiling themselves to the public after taking nearly a decade from concept to realization. Both were used for freight and both fell into disrepair due to shifting economies, and, in Gleisdreieck’s case, war and a divided city. Since leaving their railway life behind them, they have found new life: instead of providing goods, they physically connect neighborhoods in their landscape. And within that landscape they connect locals.

I find the decades-long activism work performed by Berlin residents to save and rehabilitate Gleisdreieck inspiring. From my own experience, I know how daunting projects of this scale can be. When I attended my first community board meeting in 1999, I expected to find such a group working to save the High Line.

I was wrong: people wanted to tear it down. It was there that I met Joshua David and, shortly after this chance meeting, we founded Friends of the High Line, a nonprofit to help save the High Line. Knowing that in order to be successful and save the High Line from demolition, we had to engage the community. Neither he nor I had a budget or a background in activism or city planning, so we relied on feedback from the community to find out what it wanted out of the space.

When we first began exploring this abandoned rail line, we discovered a secret garden, a wild space. Similarly, after years of neglect, the Park am Gleisdreieck had become rich with nature. What is unique about these modern urban parks it that they are really built by the community and take everyone’s need for public space into consideration. The community asked and fought for these green spaces. When I think of parks in European cities, I think of manicured gardens dedicated centuries ago to celebrate families like Hapsburgs or the Medicis. These are gorgeous spaces, but they are disconnected from the experience of living in a city, from those experiences that make urban life interesting. These jewel-box parks

8

Designing Parks

are also disconnected from their city’s surroundings; sitting in one you know you are in a park, but you do not know that you are in a magnificent place like Berlin or New York. These new parks give you a new vantage point for connecting with and observing your city.

I really respond to the connection between the designed environment and the non-designed environment of Gleisdreieck. One of the things Joshua David and I worried about when we were planning and developing the High Line was destroying this wildness that we so dearly loved; the planners of Gleisdreieck call it the “Gleiswildnis,� or rail wilderness, a perfect phrase to describe the essence of these spaces. One of the beautiful things about the Park am Gleisdreieck is that, in some parts, you feel as though you are discovering something that no one else has seen before.

Both of these projects gave the designers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: a chance to innovate a large expanse of an already well-developed city. These two parks were both forgotten-about spaces associated with urban blight, but through community action and innovative design, these relics are now destinations, desirable places to be in and around. Woven into the fabric of the landscape and into the lives of the citizens.

Parallels

9

Learning from Gleisdreieck LEONARD GROSCH

Location

A Need for History Carefully analyzing the characteristics of a location and evaluating and interpreting them remains the basis for every landscape architecture design. The qualities of a location are unique. They already exist. At a time of increasing global alignment, it is important to design distinct locations through intensifying their specific qualities. At the same time, it is necessary to conserve resources and to derive the basic spatial and functional framework from the location. Building history further in such a way increases many people’s acceptance: Such open spaces are taken as a matter of course. Through appreciating the legacy of past times, a prudent and reflected examination of a location develops. It is about the desire to find meaning in locations. Arbitrariness is rejected. Last but not least, it is also simpler for landscape architects: Why devise something that is not intrinsic to the location when careful observation of the location is able to provide the spatial and thematic concept?

What therefore does location mean? In my understanding, a location is made up of spatial qualities, of the concrete, of the structural legacies left behind by people of past eras, of an atmosphere that provides information about what a location needs, what would be suitable and what would be detrimental there, of technical constraints, and all this: at a particular point in time.

Space For me, the first step consists of perceiving the qualities in terms of substance of the existing space and describing the decisive landscape elements that characterize it. What takes place at the same time (or at least can barely be consciously separated from this) is an assessment and interpretation.

When we entered the site of the former Anhalter freight yard, walked onto the raised railway area, and left the framing, dense woodland that had established itself there behind us, we were impressed by the vastness of the clearing that

16

Designing Parks

LAWN MEADOWS RUDERAL FOREST ALLOTMENT GARDENS FRAGMENTS RESCUE AREA

Westpark U1

Elevated tracks viaduct

WOODLAND FRAME Mouth of the tunnel

Delivery road

CLEARING

U2

Ostpark

Museum train

Signal box ALLOTMENT GARDENS

Wall

Tracks and buffer stops

WOODLAND FRAME CLEARING

PLATEAU

PLATEAU

Freight car scales Bunker Signal box

Bridges over Yorckstrasse

EXPRESS TRAIN

WOODLAND FRAME

Signal box

Bottleneck Park

17

Stage and Stands

Great Cinema

A park should bring people together. It should give rise to a feeling of social closeness and a shared identity. Creating a relaxed atmosphere can contribute to mitigating social tensions or even prevent them from arising in the first place. To achieve this, it is firstly necessary to encourage communication in a targeted manner and, secondly, to produce a feeling of togetherness. How can this be realized using the means of landscape architecture?

The stages-and-stands principle orchestrates the coming together of people who would otherwise never take note of each other. People should do things and want to do things in the park: to enjoy life and show off, to let others share in their abili­ ties and hobbies. For this, there needs to be someone who does something and someone who watches, and perhaps even marvels. This results in interaction and communication.

In both halves of the Park am Gleisdreieck, there are formal stages and stands that are immediately recognizable as such: the stands already described at the mouth of the tunnel, the small stands by the dance area, and the Stelcon stands that we had layered together using the heavy-duty slabs with steel frames that were found on-site. The orientation is very important: One faces to the west, which is why it is used particularly in the late afternoon and evening for sitting, sprawling, and drinking wine; the other is oriented toward the south and is much frequented for sunbathing, picnicking, and reading. All three stands have surfaces extending in front of them like stages: The big stands at the mouth of the tunnel have a sandy area and the large meadow, the small stands by the dance area have sanded asphalt, and the Stelcon stands a surface of asphalt as well.

I have observed in hindsight that some of the stage areas apparently still have too little animation quality to attract interesting activities. For these areas, events curated by a sponsor or citizens groups would be desirable for bringing smaller, everyday sports or music events onto the stage. Bringing them alive with temporary installations or gastronomy would also be conceivable. Both would

40

Designing Parks

FORMAL STANDS FORMAL STAGE INFORMAL STANDS INFORMAL STAGE The stages and stands are also part of the program

NEST with fence for sitting PLAY TOPOGRAPHY with beam benches

LARGE STANDS with city beach WOODEN SHACK with stands

PLATFORM

CLEARING with beams for sitting

SMALL STANDS with dancing area STELCON STANDS with crossing area SKATER BOWL

CHILDREN'S ROOM with fence for sitting CLEARING with beam benches

FOREST OF POLES with edge for sitting

YORCKSTRASSE ENTRANCES with COR-TEN steel steps

STREETBALL AT THE MONUMENTSTRASSE BRIDGE

41

Location 1 Gleisdreieck is located in the heart of Berlin near Potsdamer Platz. This site was once home to freight yards. After World War II, it lay fallow, and many parts became overgrown. Two U-Bahn viaducts cross the site. A railway line runs through the middle of it in a north-south direction and therefore represents a strong spatial division.

66

1

25  An intensive feeling of wildness in the city is provided above all in the Flaschenhalspark.

Relicts of the railway use help give this location its special aura.

Mulch paths on a former track bed lead through this part of the park. They make it possible to experience it in a calm way and are well suited for jogging.

88

25

26

26 – 28 In addition to the landscape architecture design and the areas that have been left wild, the Park am Gleis­dreieck also faci­litates a lively ­garden culture. In the intercultural garden “Rosenduft,” ­women migrants garden together and grow the fruits and vegetables with which they are familiar.

The allotment gardens i­ntegrated into the park incorporate yet ­another plant world as well as different “socio-natures.”

90

27

91 28

42

42  The play topography on the green area in the Westpark represents an intensively used area. The surfacing of soft rubber granulate facilitates all kinds of locomotion and attracts people of various ages, who share this location as if a matter of course.

105

Use Openness 51 Besides specific and ambiguous use offerings, there also have to be large, use-open areas in a park. The broad clearings in both the Ostpark and Westpark are open to activities of all kinds.

116

51

Appropriation 57 Several uses in the Park am Gleisdreieck were negotiated by citizens, including the CafÊ Eule.

Due to its alternative charm, the fact that it was realized with limited means, and its lovingly prepared small dishes and beverages, it stands out as a special location in the park.

124

57

“Activity in human life is the greatest attraction in cities.”

JAN GEHL, LAS GEMZØE

P

arks are places of transformation. Gleisdreieck was once a “landscape of iron and steel,” a “magnificent temple of technology open to the air.”1 This is how Joseph Roth feted the location in 1924. Created during the peak phase of industrialization in Berlin, Gleisdreieck accommodated the Potsdamer and Anhalter freight yard. Decades of relentless activity were followed after World War II by decades during which the site lay dormant and forgotten. The iron and steel landscape became a wilderness. At the beginning of the new millennium, Gleisdreieck underwent a fundamental new transformation—into a place for leisure, recreation, and interactions with nature.

It is not only the places where parks are created that change. Parks themselves are also changing and with them the ideas of what constitutes good park design. The Park am Gleisdreieck is a milestone in the development of parks in recent decades. It has not only become a destination park, hence an open space that draws more people than live in its surroundings. It also brings together a wide range of ideas that have already been successfully tested elsewhere. The history of its creation, its design, and the practice of further developing it have turned the wheel of what once existed a bit further.

Based on the example of the Park am Gleisdreieck and with cross-references to many other projects of the past decades, in this text I will discuss current trends in the design and governance of parks as large, green open spaces. The focus is on the design by the Atelier Loidl with its ability to establish uses that are as diverse as possible and hence create a lively, popular location. At the same time, an extensive civic influence is visible in the Park am Gleisdreieck. This is reflected in the park’s range of offerings and atmospheres and therefore also in its role as an open space in the city. The park is a product of exemplary landscape-architectural staging, collective creativity, and a culture of negotiating diverse interests in urban open space.

This interplay allows for conclusions on designing parks. How can they be designed as places that facilitate a broad spectrum of uses and are explicitly oriented toward attracting many people—rather than being just formally and aesthetically innovative? How, therefore, can the “boon of life,” as Jane Jacobs called it,2 be influenced by design? And how can collaborative participation and possibilities for appropriation become integral components of urban parks?

1 Roth, “Affirmation of the Triangular Railway Junction,” 106; 2 Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 89

152

Designing Parks

My inferences on designing parks incorporate empirically verified knowledge and the teachings of great urbanists on the conditions for vibrant urban spaces.

They are nevertheless necessarily normative: they pursue value concepts and embody a particular attitude towards the city. In this, they in part clearly differentiate themselves from park designs of the nineteen-nineties and the naughts.

In a first step, I would like to characterize this attitude in more detail. In the second step, I outline the design approach that develops as a result. As a third step, I situ­ate the type of open space that this yields—the citizens’ park of the twenty-­ first century—within the development of parks in the modern era and ­provide a summary of its significant innovations. The fourth and most in-depth section contains the practical application: concrete recommendations for designing lively parks.

Designing Parks as Lively Places

153

4

Position Cleverly Another feature of good park design is that the offerings, equipment, and furnishing elements relate to one another. They are then used more frequently than those that are positioned on their own.67 Arranging use offerings close to each other can initiate what William H. Whyte called triangulation: Proximity provides the social glue that makes it possible for strangers to approach each other. In other words: Because many things are happening at the same time, opportunities for chatting arise.68 The park becomes more convivial.

At Gleisdreieck it is possible to observe this communicative effect well at the skater bowl → pic. 110. A café and restrooms are located directly opposite this sports area. A main path leads past it, and the skaters’ tricks invite passersby to remain standing and watch. Offerings are also concentrated at the entrance at Hornstrasse in the Ostpark: Steps and a ramp lead from the street level up to the park plateau.

This means that new people continuously enter the scene. Table tennis is played on the one side, while a kiosk and the Stangenwald (forest of poles) playground form a point of contact on the other → pic. 111. Two main paths intersect here. The meadow next to them is open for all kinds of activities. Two swings able to carry the weight of adults are also provided.

The design of the Park am Gleisdreieck corresponds to the five ground rules for lively spaces formulated by Jan Gehl: assemble rather than disperse, inte-

110

111

67 See The Project for Public Spaces, www.pps.org; 68 Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, 94

172

Designing Parks

112

113

grate rather than segregate, invite rather than repel, open up rather than close in, increase rather than reduce69.

It is possible to study the effect of uniform distribution without highlights or points of intersection on a small area in the ULAP Park → pic. 112 nearby the Berlin main train station. Cuboid seats are arranged there in a grid under a canopy of trees—just so far away from each other that each person sits on his or her own.

There are no backrests and nowhere in the park where more than sitting in isolation can occur.

Invalidenpark → pic. 113 in Berlin also offers a prime example of the central problem of uniform distribution. Rather than allowing a feeling of being together in the park to arise, the spatial arrangement isolates the users. A large pool of water—too big for the few visitors not to become lost—occupies the center of the newer part of the park. The stone ramp that rises up in it seems monumental and prevents eye contact from one side of the pool to the other. In the winter, the pool is empty, the center of the park therefore a dead spot. The benches lined up along Invalidenstrasse stand separated from each other, their arrangement primarily arising from aesthetic motivations.

For designing parks, this means arranging the offerings in such a way that they are related to one another. This results in crystallization and contact points at which several things occur simultaneously. People meet each other. This creates locations in the park that are particularly lively and interesting and therefore draw many users. As a designer, one should envision such hotspots in the park.

69 Gehl, Cities for People, 233

Designing Parks as Lively Places

173

1

Be Welcoming to All Appropriated spaces draw people to the park who would not use it otherwise.110 Their charm of the alternative, the self-organized, and the realized with limited means—these spaces’ shabby chic—has an effect of lowering thresholds. Landscape architecture can also get this message across: through using simple materials, being functional, working with what is there, and offering niches—rather than putting visitors on open display alone. How such a relaxed design affects the atmosphere of a park can be experienced in Mainuferpark → pic. 136, 137 in Frankfurt.111 Expensive materials, exotic plants, and “consistent over-detailing,”112 in contrast, signal exclusiveness. What developed is a design strategy that Wulf Tessin describes as “prevention architecture,” which deliberately influences the type of use and the spectrum of visitors by means of subtle or obvious control mechanisms.113 It is also possible to steer activities that require space such as skating using such means.

When a park is lively, this does not therefore automatically mean that everyone feels welcome. Young people may perceive designs, materials, and atmospheres quite differently than adults. Such things also look quite different from a middle-class perspective than from a position on the margins of society. It is not only public character and physical accessibility that regulate access to parks but also a welcoming gesture, particularly with respect to underprivileged population

136

137

110 On community gardens, see Francis, “Some Different Meanings Attached to a City Park and Community Gardens.”; 111 See Petrow, “Hidden Meanings, Obvious Messages: Landscape Architecture as a Reflection of a City’s Self-Conception and Image Strategy.”; 112 Galmar, “Der Geist Kataloniens in Hamburg,” with reference to the Magellan Terraces in HafenCity in Hamburg; 113 See Tessin, “Präventionsarchitektur. Vom gestalterischen Umgang mit unsicheren Milieus.”

188

Designing Parks

138

139

groups. “People need to feel that a public park is for them.”114 At the same time, no one group should dominate a public space → pic. 138. A large number of female visitors is a good indicator that that park is a safe, socially well balanced location.

“If a plaza has a markedly lower than average proportion of women, something is wrong,”115 noted William H. Whyte.

The Park am Gleisdreieck shows a good balance between careful detailing and robustness → pic. 139. There could still be more niches where people can feel comfortable and shielded. The design could also respond to a greater extent to the needs of older individuals. Short routes, comfortable benches, and, indeed, also flowers make parks attractive for them.116 For designing parks, this means consciously avoiding signals of exclusion. Rather than preventive design strategies, the space as a whole should be structured in such a way that it meets different needs. If the park is considered from the perspective of women and girls, children and young people, the elderly, people with disabilities, and people with limited means, then everyone else benefits. The park then namely conveys security, is easily accessible, and offers comfortable options for sitting, restrooms, many possibilities for participating in what is going on, and affordable food. It is a relaxed place that signals to every individual that they are welcome.

114 Low, Taplin, and Scheld, The Politics of Public Space, 199; 115 Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, 18; 116 On the preferences of older individuals in parks, see Gröning et al., “Gebrauchswert und Gestalt von Parks.”

Designing Parks as Lively Places

189

Visiting a park is a commonplace event in the day-to-day life of many people.

It is specifically this everyday quality that makes it particularly attractive for sociological studies, since it provides a possibility to take a closer look at the link between an individual, a quite banal-seeming action, and its social context. In this sense, a study of what goes on in a park and the complex inter­actions that take place there is a good opportunity to shed more light on the relationship between human action and architecturally designed space.

Within the framework of an empirical study, we asked how the design of a park might be interwoven with the subjective experience of its visitors. The Park am Gleisdreieck seems almost ideal as an example because here the interplay between architecture, its use and appropriation is still developing. In the course of the study, perceiving, or perhaps better, experiencing an atmosphere proved to be a meaningful, if often unnoticed, basic practice of a visit to a park. The apparently large role that atmospheres play in the experience of visiting a park led us to the idea of focusing our work on the way in which atmospheres are produced.

To investigate the complex bases of atmospheres, we looked at two things: the ideas behind the atmosphere of the Park am Gleisdreieck that were developed in the course of planning and the atmospheres that park visitors actually experience. We were interested in the possibilities for influencing the activities of actors by means of a landscape architectural design. When assessing our empirical material, we crisscrossed statements by the main planner and the intentions of the design with the effect of this design that visitors perceive. What interested us as sociologists was what concretely ensures that people experience park spaces in a specific way, which factors influence how a space is experienced, and how these factors take effect. On the whole, with reference to the research that underlies this contribution, we asked how atmospheres are produced in the Park am Gleis­ dreieck.1

1 The institutional framework of our one-year work was a teaching /research project at the TU Berlin. Under the guidance of Prof. Martina LĂśw and Dr. Gunter Weidenhaus, what was examined was how the constitution of spaces and the meaning ascribed to these spaces changed over the course of time.

198

Designing Parks

How Does One Examine a Park?

T

he goal was not to be able to arrive at generalizable statements about particular circumstances but rather to examine the specific practices and interactions that are relevant to people’s “affective involvement”2 in a specific environment. For this reason, we decided on a study using methods for qualitative social research. They make it possible, even with a relatively limited number of cases, to reconstruct the construction and ascription of meaning that underlie people’s actions and that are expressed in their actions. We inquired into the situative practices of the uses that take place in the park in the sense of an ethnomethodological research program.

To approach the subject, we first conducted three expert interviews: with Leonard Grosch, the main planner of the park; employees of the green space administration of another Bezirksamt (district administration); and a lecturer on open space planning at the Technical University Berlin. We also talked with sixteen park visitors between the ages of approximately eighteen to sixty-five on-site and conducted five- to fifteen-minute guided interviews with them. The questions were focused on people’s actions in the park, their opinions, and their favorite places.

Sociodemographic features were not ascertained in the process.

The fact that weather plays a role in how the park is perceived became clear in the additional, guided in-depth interviews.3 For them, a researcher took one man and one woman through the Park am Gleisdreieck in the fall and winter of 2014 and asked them about their impressions. Both interviews have a length of around one hour. In addition, participatory observations and self-observations were also ascertained.4 The survey can therefore be subsumed in terms of method5 under the concept of focused ethnography. Altogether, data collection extended over several weeks; the corpus of data it provided comprises 250 pages.

An explorative empirical study can, however, also not dispense with theo­ retical foundations. In order to retain a certain candor during the work in the park, we used various sociological approaches as heuristics. Heuristics allow for assumptions that—although they are based on theories—do not claim to ­concretely reflect 2 Böhme Architektur und Atmosphäre, 26; 3 Breidenstein et al., Ethnografie, 80–85; 4 On the mix of methods, see Breiden­stein et al., Ethnografie, 71–80; 5 See Knoblauch, “Fokussierte Ethnographie : Soziologie, Ethnologie und die neue Welle der Ethnographie.”

A Park Full of Atmospheres

199

LEONARD GROSCH is a landscape architect. He grew up in Munich, completed his training as a perennial plant gardener there, and then studied at the TU Dresden, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, and the TU Berlin. He has been managing the competition department at Atelier Loidl since 2003, and been a partner in Atelier Loidl since 2007. With his team, he has won numerous big competitions and realized the projects that developed from them. The Park am Gleisdreieck was awarded the Deutscher Landschaftsarchitekturpreis (German Landscape Architecture Prize) in 2015. Leonard Grosch lives in Berlin.

DR. CONSTANZE A. PETROW is a landscape architect. She grew up in Berlin, studied at the TU Berlin, worked in various planning offices, and did her doctorate at the Leibniz University in Hannover. In addition to her extensive publishing activities and her research, which is dedicated to the contemporary work of landscape architecture and its interplay with social developments, she has also been teaching design since 2001, first at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, as a guest lecturer at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center (Virginia Tech) in Washington D.C., and since 2009 in the department of design and open space planning at the TU Darmstadt. Constanze A. Petrow lives in Frankfurt am Main.