Client: Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung Berlin / Peter-Joseph-Lenné-Preis
Design team: Lysann Schmidt
My role: Competition submission (result: one of the best 11projects)
Location: Karl-Marx-Allee, Berlin, Germany
Date: 2005
Surface area: 185 000m²
The competition brief asked for landscape design ideas for this historically important urban ensemble called Karl-Marx-Allee today. This road with its typical socialistic architecture and large representative open spaces was part of the socialist building program in the 1950s of the newly founded GDR. My competition design analyses the contrast between the historic context where a young proud homogenise nation was promoted, and the actual cultural diversity that exists today in Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain. It is this contrast to represent the richness of today’s demography by mosaic of linear “plant cultures“. These various bands, integrating spaces for neighbourhood gardening and associations, playgrounds and restaurant terraces, form a rich but uniform landscape along the 2.5km long space.