Natur Park Schöneberger Südgelände and Berlin’s Urban Nature

The International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens 2022

32nd edition

edited by Patrizia Boschiero, Thilo Folkerts, Luigi Latini

Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche-Antiga

Treviso 2022

244 pages, 151 illustrations in colour and 33 black and white

cover price 20 euros, ISBN 978-88-8435-297-2

Italian edition: ISBN 978-88-8435-296-5

(series Memorie/dossier)

The 32nd International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens is dedicated to Natur Park Schöneberger Südgelände and to ‘Berlin’s urban nature’. Located just south of the S-Bahn ring, the park is the result of the abandonment of a vast railyard and its radical reclaiming by nature: a unique condition recognised for its ecological and social value and informed by the concurrent interaction of residents’ voices, landscape culture, art and ecology.

Open to the public since 1999, Natur Park Südgelände has been an experimental case study and catalyst, inseparably linked to Berlin’s history and to the existence of a ‘school of urban ecology,’ which has stimulated and guided both the design perspective and the widespread awareness of the landscape that have given rise to an idea of ‘urban nature’ in this city.

 

Contents

The International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens

Statement of the Carlo Scarpa Prize, in English, German and Italian, edited by the Scientific Committee of the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche

Thilo Folkerts, Berlin, the emergence of an urban nature

 

Natur Park Südgelände

Ingo Kowarik, Südgelände, Berlin: transforming a wild urban wasteland to a new kind of nature park

Natur Park Südgelände: project, maintenance, development, Rita Suhrhoff in conversation with Thilo Folkerts

Natur Park Südgelände: the role of the art, Klaus Duschat in conversation with Thilo Folkerts

Chronology of the Natur Park Schöneberger Südgelände 1838-2025: from shunting yard to nature park

Christoph Schmidt, A new city experience: the key role of Natur Park Südgelände for the urban paradigm shift in Berlin

 

Berlin

Lorenza Manfredi, Jannis Schiefer, Laura Veronese, Through Berlin: urban natures

Stefanie Hennecke, Berlin, a brief history of its parks

Almut Jirku, Like pearls on a string: the Berlin open spaces system and the Park am Gleisdreieck

Ingo Kowarik, The Berlin School of Urban Ecology and the emergence of wasteland ecology

Sandra Jasper, Berlin, a ruderal urbanism

Grün Berlin: sustainable routes for developing public space

 

Further reflections. On urban nature

Berlin and the development of contemporary landscape culture, Gabriele G. Kiefer in conversation with Thilo Folkerts

Norbert Kühn, Urban spontaneous vegetation as a tool for climate adaptation

Heinz W. Hallmann and Ursula Wilms, The design of the Topographie des Terrors site

Leonard Grosch, Berlin’s Park am Gleisdreieck or the art of designing lively places

Anna Lambertini, Hybrid, cosmopolitan, inventive. Nature of urban wildness

Juan Manuel Palerm, The wild nature of the wastelands. On Berlin, ‘urban nature,’ architecture, art and the void as project material. The case of Natur Park Schöneberger Südgelände

 

Carlo Scarpa Prize 1990-2022

The activities of the Carlo Scarpa Prize for the place

The authors

Illustration references