Archive: Capital City Berlin - Development Programme 1993 until 2013

The balance sheet looks good – and it will continue to improve. Of the 580 million euros dedicated to the development programme to develop and design primarily public areas, almost 90 percent has been used. The remaining funds will be used in the coming years to realise the results of the competitions for the re-design of the Humboldtforum and Petriplatz in the eastern development section of Spreeinsel, as well as for the re-design of the Luisenblock along Schiffbauerdamm near the Spreebogen.

The reconstruction of the Stadtschloss by architect Franco Stella at the Humboldtforum will result in a building with some 41,000 square meters of space. Beginning in 2019, it will bring together in the “Humboldtforum” the non-European collections of Berlin’s state museums, the scientifi c collection of Humboldt-University and some departments of the central and state library. The design of Schlossplatz has proved to be equally as important as the building volume of the Stadtschloss as an urban planning hinge. It offers the chance for pedestrians, strollers and tourists to glimpse historical moments, to allow history to appear in the cityscape. This was the thought that guided the BBZ landscape architects, whose 2012 concept took first place in the open space design competition. 2017 will see the beginning of the implementation of their plans for an interpretation of the future Humboldtforum site that is reduced to meaningful large-scale forms and references history. Their design keeps the fault lines and seams identifiable, while not making them obvious, for generations to come – as the last traces of a successful unification of east and west in a capital that has coalesced. Among the stages of the development programme that have not yet been realised, but which have already been started in concrete terms are the area surrounding Humboldthafen, with a newly-designed promenade, next to which the new building for the Federal Ministry of Education and Research on Kapelleufer already towers.

Also on the list is re-development of the area between Leipziger Strasse, Mauerstrasse and Zimmerstrasse, called the “Postblock”. Here, additional government and parliament institutions could be located opposite the Federal Ministry of Finance in the building that was the aviation ministry of the Third Reich.

text: Jochen Stöckmann