18/07/2020
Happy about 2nd Prize at the international urban design competition Berlin-Brandenburg 2070!
Vision for a Metropolitan Ecotone:
How can we envision a future of the metropolitan city-region Berlin-Brandenburg at the transition from a fossil-fuel based neo-liberal economy to a future based ecological principles, social justice, a more diverse economy, a more generous public realm, and more effective collaboration between government and all stakeholders? Above all, planning and design projects need to build resilience to changing climate now.
Berlin-Brandenburg’s star-shaped settlement figure began to take shape a hundred years ago by supporting development along the centrifugal country roads. Today it continues to develop along these mostly rail-based infrastructure lines and as a model with large landscape wedges reaching into the city it retains its potential for adaptation. Rather than the growth model of sprawl spreading outward from the center of the metropolis, we propose to guide development along the edge of the arms of the settlement star creating a zone for building an ecological and social vision for the Berlin-Brandenburg region.
The project, which looks at the city from the agricultural region, conceives a sustainable metropolis formed from the traces and knowledge embedded in the landscape, und pushes this deep into the city fabric. Our concept is an edge zone mosaic of flexible development zones that will bring agency and adaptive potential to this settlement pattern. It will be a composite of present and future experimental development. It is where innovative cooperative and regenerative typologies of residential, agricultural, commercial and industrial can find their place. As a multifunctional buffer, it can accept functions which are unsuitable for the adjoining urban and rural settlement areas. Landscape and ecology will inform a varied mosaic of building typologies and ensembles. These will support sustainable flows of water, energy, material and food across the region. New social arrangements and new kinds of work will be brought into being. The ecotone is an incubator for a transforming metropolitan region, in which ecology, diversity and substantial participation from the basis of living together.
KOPPERROTH, SMAQ, Alex Wall, Office MMK, Stefan Tischer Landschaftsarchitektur
Team: Marcus Kopper, Martin Roth, Evelina Faliagka, Dominik Renner, Prof. Andreas Quednau, Prof. Sabine Müller, Eirik Stokke, Espen Heggertveit, Prof. Alex Wall, Moritz Maria Karl, Prof. Stefan Tischer
