U r b a n D e s i g n
A c a d e m y J e w i s h M u s e u m B e r l i n
Urban Design Study
Consulting and Quality Management Urban Design
Competition Management Urban Spaces
Planning Exterior Spaces Academy
Clients
Jewish Museum Foundation Berlin
Senate Department for Urban Development Berlin
Ulrike
Böhm, Cyrus Zahiri, Katja Benfer,
Matthias Sachse, Mara Werner,Anna-Kajsa
Gustavsson, Pilar Morilla, Rita Leal, Anne Wex,
Ann-Kristin Haeger, Christina Bös,Sumika Aizawa
The site of the future academy is situated on the border between Köpenicker Vorstadt and southern Friedrichstadt. These two city districts differ from each other in structure and historical development. While the city plan along Lindenstraße developed in a gradual urbanization process, the southern area of Friedrichsstadt was developed as part of a planned grid structure.
Johann Philipp Gerlach, royal building director under Friedrich Wilhelm I, began designing it as a continuation of the orthogonal organization of Dorotheenstadt. He emphasized the transitions and changes of direction between the two parts of the city with architectural focal points. The Kollegienhaus, now housing the Jewish Museum, is one of these points.
Even as the head of the Prussian building administration Gerlach did not manage to transfer the small scale and very porous structure of Friedrichstadt onto the area south of it. The blocks in Friedrichstadt are barely one hectare each.
By contrast, the plot in front of the Kollegienhaus had an area of about 154 hectares. Using this extraordinarily large scale, the Royal Observatory was built on this site in 1835 and, around 1880, Berlin’s second wholesale market hall. Plans from the 1960s designated parts of the area as the site for the Berlin wholesale flower market. In some parts a motorway junction should be constructed.
These large scale uses were always contrasted by interventions that aimed at dividing the area in smaller sections and thus integrating it better in its surroundings. The 1835 construction of Enckeplatz and the garden adjoining the observatory and, in 1913, the opening of Enckestraße onto Lindenstraße belonged to these interventions. In the 1980s, the E.T.A. Hoffmann Promenade and Besselpark were created as parts of the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA).
We have tried to take the complex planning history of the site into consideration. In particular the connections of the site to the surrounding city structure and the architectural framing of the public spaces seemed important. The urban development concept envisions a sequence of city squares between Friedrichstraße and the Kollegienhaus.
In front of the building of the Jewish Museum Academy a new entrance plaza is created, opening up to the Kollegienhaus and the Liebeskind building. The transition to Besselpark is accentuated by a second smaller square. In its prolongation a crossing of the park to Friedrichstraße is planned. The south side of Besselpark will be redefined.
The building of the Jewish Museum Academy forms the centre of the new quarter. The former flower market hall with its sawtooth roof, built in the 1960s and designed by the architect Bruno Grimmek, is staged as a plastic building volume facing the Kollegienhaus and Besselpark. The hall’s remaining sides will be surrounded by new developments.
These buildings will add everyday uses like housing, offices and shopping to the current exclusively cultural character of the site. In order to leave space for ideas of future users, the building parcels are at first kept typologically open. The design freedom of future developers and their architects is only limited along the sequence of city squares, where urban rules restrict building lines and building heights.
landscapes urban design
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