Quartier Am Humboldthain: Development of a commercial quarter in Berlin-Mitte
South of the Volkspark Humboldthain in Berlin-Mitte, the largest commercial project development within Berlin's S-Bahn ring is being built on an area of around 6.5 hectares - the Quartier Am Humboldthain. The site is framed by the historic buildings on the site of the former Allgemeine Electricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG). The buildings bear witness to the industrial importance of the site over the past hundred years. Today, the site is also home to the Technologie Park Humboldthain (TPH), one of eleven Berlin sites of the future (Zukunftsorte). The Quartier Am Humboldthain will also tie in with the historical significance and the current surroundings as a commercial location. It will combine research, science, education, business and urban production.
The large Nixdorf production building from the 1980s will be replaced by a climate-friendly development. The heart of the new quarter will be a green neighborhood park with a retention basin. In the spirit of circular construction, the aim is to use as many of the materials to be deconstructed as possible for the new buildings.
The BÜRO DR. VOGEL GMBH together with Coros is the development partner of Quartier Am Humboldthain GmbH. The quarter is expected to be completed in its main urban development features by 2028.
Tasks
The BÜRO DR. VOGEL GMBH was commissioned to work out a development process that would enable the creation of a sustainable quarter oriented to the needs of the present and future location. This includes the development of the procedural basis as well as strategy and the active support of the development process in the different project phases. In doing so, the special nature as a high-tech and research location and the central location in an area of the development concept for the production-oriented area (EpB) must be taken into account.
Approach
A multi-stage procedure was designed as the development process - open project development. The basis was a workshop procedure that took place between June and August 2021. This involved politics, administration, business and citizens in equal measure. For this purpose, several expert and citizen dialogs were held. In this way, as many perspectives, requirements and needs as possible could be identified at the site and integrated into the planning. The findings were documented and recorded in a report. This formed the basis for the urban planning competition.
A total of 20 international architectural firms took part in the urban planning competition. The first stage ended in March 2022. In the second stage, eight architectural firms were given the opportunity to revise their designs. The urban design competition ended in August 2022, and the winner was the design by Copenhagen-based architectural firm Cobe, which arranges the new quarter around a central green neighborhood square. Cobe was commissioned to prepare the master plan as the basis for the development plan process, which is currently underway.
Result / Added value
In the workshop process, concrete usage needs and requirements for the future quarter were identified. The report on the results formed the common basis for the further development of the client, politics, administration, business and citizens. At the same time, it defined the guidelines for the architects in the subsequent urban planning competition. In the long term, this approach ensures that a flexible mix of uses with a sustainable and future-oriented urban design characterizes the neighborhood.
The special feature of the approach was that the complex requirements at the site were first determined, a utilization concept was defined in appreciation of the StEP Wirtschaft 2030 (Berlin), and only then was the urban development planned based on this. This approach ensured that the resulting quarter would actually meet the requirements of later users. The early and broad involvement of other stakeholders in the workshop procedure and the urban planning competition ensured the greatest possible degree of consensus.
Project volume
1,7 billion € (constuction volume on completion)
