Design, Visualization & Photography
Design, Visualization & Photography
An overgrown wilderness and carefully designed landscape, restorative retreat and versatile open space – a new type of city park has been created in Berlin’s Gleisdreieck area. Local residents were involved in its development from the outset. The 26-hectare Park am Gleisdreieck, consisting of eastern and western Ostpark and Westpark sections, has evolved from an inaccessible wasteland to a favourite place for Berliners and tourists of all ages.
A hundred years ago this was a railway hub in an industrial setting. Now a modern Berlin public park offers space for everyone: skaters and joggers, walkers and beach volleyball players, picnickers and sports enthusiasts, nature explorers and technology fans.
Designer: Atelier LOIDL
Location: Berlin, Germany
Year: 2018
Text adapted from Gruen Berlin
From 1874 until it was destroyed in the Second World War, the site was used as freight and mail railyard, and linked to Anhalter Bahnhof and Potsdamer Bahnhof. Before a serious accident in 1912, railway lines intersected here in the form of a triangle or “Dreieck”, from which the area takes its name.
Passenger and freight rail services ceased here after 1945 and only S-Bahn and U-Bahn trains continued to cross the former railway yards, which gradually turned into an inaccessible urban wasteland.
Various plans for it were made from the 1970s, ranging from construction through to road building, but initiatives by citizens who regarded it as ideal as an urgently-needed recreational space, successfully blocked the construction plans. In 1997 the State of Berlin decided to turn the site into a park.
Work to create the winning design by Atelier Loidl (Berlin) began in 2008. In 2011 the park’s eastern section (Ostpark) was completed and two years later its western section (Westpark) was finished.
A new type of park has been created at Gleisdreieck in terms of both the opportunities for citizens to actively contribute to its development and its landscape. The main idea behind its design was to create a “two-speed” park for all its various users.
Active park users can enjoy all kinds of sports in its diverse range of facilities, such as the skater park, broad asphalt paths and open green spaces.
At the same time, the desire of many users for peace and quiet, relaxation and enjoyment of nature is also accommodated.
The park’s design is characterized by spacious central lawns and meadows edged by copses and single trees, and crossed by broad paths.
During its time as a wild wasteland, a unique ecological diversity evolved at Gleisdreieck and it has been retained in the new park.
The park offers playgrounds and sports fields, a skater park and very special open spaces and places for people to meet, such as the “Rosenduft” intercultural garden, areas for visitors to experience nature in the Ostpark, and “Gardens within a Garden” in the Westpark.
Its design concept also reflects the site’s historic use. Observant visitors will find traces of its past in the form of old railway tracks, signalling equipment and buffers, especially in the Ostpark and Flaschenhals Park.
U-Bahn viaducts create a formative setting for the Westpark and individual viaduct arches of this inimitable transport architecture lend the park additional structure.
Multifunctional sport and games areas for beach volleyball, trampolining, streetball, sunbathing lawns and a sunbathing terrace with a sandpit in front of it invite visitors to get involved in a wide range of leisure activities.
One sporting highlight in the park’s eastern section is the 1,300 square-metre skate park, which has the city’s biggest outdoor pool. Active skaters participated in its development and it offers lots of room for slides, grinds and flips.
If you’d rather take longer, faster rides, there’s plenty of space to do it on the park’s smooth asphalt paths.
Historic relics testify to the park’s and its area’s history, which has been ‘moving’ in many senses of the word. Many of these vestiges have been integrated into the new park’s design, historic remnants and relics such as copses and individual trees, old platforms, buffers, signalling equipment and paved areas – all reminders of its former railway function worth preserving.