Berlin – Helmholtzplatz (DE) 1999, Community Planning ‘light’

Course

More than 70 participants, numerous of them residents, took the chance during the venture days to present and discuss the situation at the Helmholtzplatz and find creative ways for solving the specific problems. Working groups gathered problems as well as ideas and visions for the future of the place assisted by the neutral moderator team of the MATCH Development Consulting. Topics were the image of the Helmholtzplatz, facilities, design and competing demands. By hands-on-planning-tables residents and with experts designed the new Helmholtzplatz. In the following days landscape architects together with the moderating team created a plan and strategies for its implemation, based on the results of the venture days. The conclusion was a “place for all”, permitting independent coexistance of different users as well as enough space for activ co-operations at the Helmholtzplatz.

Helmholtzplatz – its history

The Helmholtzplatz is with its 14.000 qm the only bigger green space for 18.000 residents within a densely packed Wilhelminian style area in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. Founded shortly after 1900 – over the fundaments of an old brickyard – since its last rearrangement in the seventies the place was neighter correlating to its historical standard nor to the recent needs. Due to a lack of money the place was still not renewed, and the results of an urban development competition in the nineties were not fundable. So the Helmholztplatz became a meeting point for alcoholics and junkies.

1998 it was obvious that something has to be done. Governmental and private bodies developed a communtiy planning program involving residents in the process. Already in 1999 landscape architects could be mandated to envolve a remediation program for the place. Step by step the Helmholtzplatz was changed and in all three phases of construction the residents and all involved parties were integrated. In June 2001 the place with its versatily facilities was opend to the citizens in Prenzlauer Berg.

Opening 2001