Vacant Space + Temporary Use: Understanding Development Cycles in Berlin’S Neighborhoods of Friedrichshain + Kreuzberg

Vacant Space + Temporary Use: Understanding Development Cycles in Berlin’s Neighborhoods of Friedrichshain + Kreuzberg Taylor Miller // A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Architecture + Planning // Columbia University // In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science in Urban Planning // May 2014 Table of Contents Abstract 04 Introduction 04 Historical Context 05 Literature Review 06 Development Cycles Conceptual Framework 11 Methodology 12 Validity Threats 13 Findings 14 Discussion of Plans 14 Three Uses 17 Vacant 18 Temporary 24 Permanent 27 Points of Comparison 27 Analyzing these Neighborhoods with the Development Cycles Framework 28 Planning Implications 32 Works Cited 34 Acknowledgements thank you so much to all of my friends, family + advisors for always reminding me exactly what this paper really means - graduating - and the pursuit of that other important piece of paper. your support means everything to me. 2 3 Introduction (Wood). Many have looked at the propensity of II destroyed large parts of the built environment and In the past five years, I have lived in four of the temporary uses in vacant spaces. The barriers of was coupled with the psychological scars of being Western world’s major cities: Los Angeles, London, entry are low in these spaces of innovation where home to the political will of the world’s most infamous New York City, and Paris. While the former may be new ideas can be tested at low costs with relative dictator and all his abuses. This era was followed by more of an outlier than the three latter, these cities ease of reversal (Frisk). decades of literal separation with the construction of have formed my idea of the urban form. The city of Gaps in the literature are an understanding the Berlin Wall that split the city in half and served as Berlin takes on a different shape, in large part due to not just of what a vacant space is and what term a pawn in the Cold War between the USSR and the the ubiquity of the void. The literature is relentless in should be given to it, but in an understanding of USA. When reunification finally came, there was a its desire to present Berlin as unique: “The city is not its use and its process of redevelopment. A nice five-year burst of euphoria, then a period of similar beautiful, but presents itself as more of a challenge. start has been undertaken in exploring the process length of disenchantment leading into the current It pushes its visitors to explore it and ever again of temporary uses that often coincide with vacant period of stagnation (Peters). While not technically confronts them with new and different perspectives, spaces (SenStadt, SUC); however, my research aims a shrinking city in the vein of American cities like always postponing the moment where one gets a to take this further by considering both spaces that Detroit or Philadelphia, Berlin experienced its boon grip of it. Berlin is clumsily unfinished. Its appearances are not developed and the transition from temporary in both construction and inhabitants in the 1920s do not reveal its different meanings” (Cuplers 58). It uses to more permanent uses as part of the larger (Bodenschatz) and never recovered the population it stands in defiance of the other Western cities “with development cycle. To aid with this understanding lost in WWII. This led to a less populous city today than their respectable centres” (Firebrace). My own notes of the development cycle, predictions of various a century ago. In light of this history, it is no wonder from my visits read similarly, “the number of vacant models like Ernest Burgess’ concentric circles or J.R. that “Germans do not dream of a different future, lots is insane… the nothingness of parts of the Whitehand’s innovation/building cycle model with but of a different past” (Oswalt 56). “Burdened by the waterfront… ridiculously wide streets.” Yet in these internal change are applied to these neighborhoods weight of history and in constant search of identity, same neighborhoods, there exists unique, strange, as potential conceptual frameworks. there is no other city other than Berlin manifesting and fleeting occupiers of these spaces in the form of The intent of this study is to understand the instabilities of ideology in such a dramatic way” such oddities like circus schools, pirate beach bars, the nature, promotion, support, and shedding of (Cupers). While much has been written about the Abstract or sunflower mazes. Side by side with these uses are vacant space and temporary use in cities as part implications of memory and the weight of history in Due to its complex history, Berlin is massive arenas and corporate headquarters. While of a larger development cycle through the case the process of rebuilding Berlin (i.e. Ladd, Marcuse), prone to a large amount of vacant space this research began as an exploration of the study of Berlin’s neighborhoods of Friedrichshain a smaller subsect of the literature has focused on the particularly in comparison to other European phenomena of vacant space, the context and facts and Kreuzberg, as well as utilizing the lens of actual built environment created by this history – cities. This thesis sought to understand the the areas of study presented to me transformed both Whitehand and Burgess’ spatial models of namely, the vast amount of vacant space. nature, promotion, support, and shedding the research into an understanding of the entire development cycles. Vacant and marginal spaces The reasons for vacant space within the city of vacant and temporary use in cities as process of development beginning with the will be generally defined as either sites that contain are numerous. With the city’s rapid industrialization part of a larger development cycle through plethora of vacant space in the city through the no built structures, but are not being used as formal in the early 1900’s came a profusion of public space the case study of Berlin’s neighborhoods unusual uses that are now synonymous with parks or sites with built structures that are not being associated with poverty and social decay (Braun). As of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. A review Berlin’s identity and culminating in the new large- utilized by the owner of the site either through mentioned, bomb damage in WWII only exacerbated of plans, interviews, site visits, and the scale constructions. owner habitation or owner leasing to others who are matters. With the two separate cities during the Wall updating of the city’s database on vacant A large part of the discourse thus far has inhabiting. While the research remains a case study years came two separate planning outlooks. While the space contributed to a better understanding focused on simply defining vacant spaces and for how a particular neighborhood handled the West was generally densely developed as one would of the process at play. These sites were then putting forward terms to use in classifying them (i.e. dismantling of a wall or large piece of infrastructure, expect within walled confines, the East consisted analyzed through the development cycles GUST, Jansen, Doron, Sheridan, de Sola-Morales). it also points to the need for the Berlin government of large open spaces and neglect of its outlying of J.R. Whitehand and Ernest Burgess to see A frequent thread through the literature is not just to balance the desire to gain revenue from more city districts. Along both sides of the wall, East and if the process of construction and change the lack of physical structure or use of the space, but permanent uses with the positive effects for the built West neglected large open areas (Schwedler). In the in the city of Berlin could be explained by the idea of a lack of control and resultant freedom environment and people that the vacant spaces and midst of this, vacant space was sometimes created these models. of opportunity. Sheridan proposes a definition of temporary uses are providing. deliberately as a part of modernist models “applied in what he calls ‘indeterminate spaces’ as “any area, parts of East and West Berlin between the 1950s and space, or building where the city’s normal forces of Historical Context 1970s that privileged large open spaces between control have not shaped how we perceive, use, and While this research focuses on the side of buildings” (Colomb 133). GUST is particularly critical occupy them” (98). These are areas where uses by the cycle from vacant to built as opposed to built of this approach writing that “by declaring buildings those on the margins can occur that are difficult to to vacant, it is first important to understand some to be autonomous objects, modernist planners make happen elsewhere. Others have conducted context of the city’s development that resulted in the created desolate fields of nonurban space that made case studies of the use of vacant space in the United City’s initial proliferation of vacant space. Berlin is a brutal cuts through neighborhoods and radically States (Bowman and Pagano) or as national policies city with a complex narrative: bombing in World War isolated people. The ensuing wastelands, wholly 4 5 tailored to the car, lacked all form of human scale Literature Review etymology of the word vague, he compares the idea building that is disappearing” (98). One is a sign of and any of this sense of shelter and coziness that are Much of the discourse on vacant space so far of vague as movement, oscillation, instability, or growth, while one is a sign of stagnation or distress. generally deemed to be characteristic of premodern (in Berlin and elsewhere) has focused on defining fluctuation versus empty, unoccupied, free, available, In previous times in Berlin, “ the existence of public space in Europe” (41).

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