SPREEBOGEN: NEW CENTER FOR THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT

Berlin, Germany: 1992

For a prominent site in Berlin's renowned Tiergarten, RSAUD developed a master plan to situate the soon-to-be-relocated seat of the newly-reunited German government. Straddling a bend in the river Spree, the site is bounded to the north by a railroad viaduct roughly paralleling the path of the river; to the east by the Reichstag, former seat of the German government; and to the south by the famed Unter den Linden, the city's primary east-west thoroughfare. The 43-acre project site is primarily accessed from the rail station on its northern edge, which is planned to be the city's main train depot. Functions for the over 500,000 square feet of new space to be constructed there include the Bundesrat (Parliament) and Bundestag (Senate); Chancellery (official State residence); Press Corps offices; and "embassies" for the individual Landeren, or States, into which Germany is divided. An extensive series of public open spaces are also included, in an effort to integrate the complex into the existing park network.

Like the ancient cardo and decumanus, the site is crossed by two lines of pedestrian travel which not only tie together significant landmarks within the site to the immediate vicinity, but also organize it into four quadrants, each occupied by a different public use and branch of government: the Bundestag, Bundesrat, Federal Chancellery, Support Services (commercial, retail and residential space) and, at the intersection of the two paths, the Press Area, the place of meeting and exchange between the four constituencies. These four quadrants vary in pattern, density and character, each in response to the exigencies of its program; the problems posed by the immediate urban context; or evidence concerning the history of the site and its vicinity.

Superimposed upon this quadrantized landscape organization are several other coincident systems of order which provide an alternate experience of the site to that of travel along the quadrant lines themselves. One of these is a system of allees which visually connect the proposed centers of public gathering with existing ones: the old Reichstag to the new Bundesrat (plenary chamber); the existing Unter den Linden at the Brandenburg Gate with the new Federal Chancellery; the old Kulturforum with the new Humboldthafen. A second path system, in the form of a serpentine loop which meanders through each of the four sectors, operates as a self-contained circuit that locally extends the larger riverside path system of the City. Another path--lined by cypresses--marks and memorializes the former path of the Berlin wall. This interweaving of elements belonging to one time period with those of another is accomplished elsewhere in the site design through the dramatic contrasts of density between highly structured and defined urban space and open expanses of landscape so characteristic of the physical landscape of post-war Berlin. By establishing an armature for the future urban growth, this proposal seeks to preserve the curious state of equilibrium in which the fabric of Berlin appears to hover, half appearing in a state of decay, half in a state of evolution.

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