Berlin/Brandenburg

There are reports in the press that one party in the House of Representatives is proposing to build on the Spreebogen.

Berlin, July 12, 2016 - The Association of German Landscape Architects bdla, regional group Berlin-Brandenburg, firmly rejects this idea and demands: "Hands off the Spreebogenpark!"

At the Spreebogen there is currently not, as suggested in various reports, an urban wasteland, but a dedicated green space, the Spreebogenpark. In addition, the open space is an inseparable part of the globally recognized urban development concept "Band des Bundes" by Berlin architects Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank.

What negatively affects Spreebogenpark, apart from a lack of maintenance, is the Federal Government's persistent refusal to finally lift the bypass around the Swiss Embassy and to actually implement the traffic routing stipulated in the development plan. Whoever wants to improve something here should influence the federal government and the Bundestag in this sense, instead of making sentiment against green spaces with backward-looking concepts.

Up to now, it has seemed to the bdla to be a city-wide consensus that Berlin has an outstanding green space and a striking urban figure here, between the Federal Quarter and the now dense station district. This is particularly evident in the planted terraces and the massively used gastronomy along the Spree. Here Berlin vibrates on hot summer days, the symbiosis between metropolis and green in the city becomes visible.

The Spreebogenpark, the result of a Europe-wide open landscape planning competition, is an elementary component of the government district and a meeting place for Berliners and their guests. What city has such an attractive public open space, which received many praising reviews after its completion, right next to one of Germany's largest railway stations? Furthermore, Spreebogenpark is part of the north-south green corridor, which also has important urban climatic significance.

Obvious structural deficiencies and, above all, what we consider to be an unacceptable state of maintenance of the park should be discussed with the authors of the Spreebogenpark, the Swiss landscape architects w s Landschaftsarchitekten Toni Weber and the Mitte district, as should a sensible adaptation of the network of paths.

The bdla therefore demands that the Spreebogenpark be included in the current discussion on the development of the Federal Forum and that both sites be further upgraded, instead of diverting attention from the actual problems by proposals for the development of the Spreebogen that are hardly capable of reaching a consensus!

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