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Core idea of the project
Nowhere in Berlin can one find more open space than in the Tempelhofer area. This is a truly unique experience: in no other city in Europe can one enjoy the overwhelming sensation of such undisturbed horizon.
Yet in a modern metropolis setting, this situation is likely to be destroyed by housing projects or by other future architectural plans.
The official planning of the Berlin Senate is already taking catastrophic directions. It plans to divide the area in several sections:
• development of border areas - the beautiful view of the passing Berlin S-Bahn would be gone, the area would decrease significantly.
• an enclosed, artificial Garden Exhibition (IGA 2017) would separate large areas of the field (good news: IGA canceled!)
• “cosmetic procedures” by professional landscapers (mini mountain, mini-lake, some trees, new paths etc).
How can we preserve a truly unique and historically valuable area for the future?
By creating a huge urban lake. Only a lake of this size will preserve the contours of the historic airfield for the foreseeable future. It impresses by its enormous dimensions, yet at the same time by its sheer conceptual simplicity.
The lake will be surrounded by parks, which are accessible to anyone, and open 24/7. In the optical center, we create the Tempelhof Island. On the Island, a huge wind turbine will be the eye-catcher. This will create both a unique aesthetic experience - its slowly revolving wings being a reference to the aviation history of the area - , as well as a visionary display of the technological innovations needed to solve the largest issue of the earth: the need for renewable energy.
The Berlin Senate Building Director Regula Lüscher once called the Tempelhofer area an “opportunity of the century”. We believe this opportunity needs much more than mindless division of space. Instead, our urban lake is a solution worthy of the challenge. |
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 About “Common Ground,” the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, organized by the fine British architect David Chipperfield. (by Michael Kimmelman)
...having lived in Berlin for years, I was grateful for a meditation by Thomas Kupke, Philipp Oswalt and others on the closing of the Tempelhof Airport, one of the glories of 1930s design, a relic of postwar glamour and civilized travel....
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