On the Future of Tempelhof and Tegel

Enlarge image A view of the Tempelhof Airport buildings (© picture-alliance/ dpa ) In 2012, the new Berlin airport Berlin-Brandenburg will be opened in Schönefeld. The city is looking for new uses for the old airports Tempelhof and Tegel.

The Eurovision Song Contest will be held in the Tempelhof Airport, so decided the Berlin Senate in its application for the 2011 singers’ Grand Prix. Lena Meyer-Landrut, winner of the 2010 prize for Germany, will sing her song and defend her title in the hangar of the world’s oldest commercial airport.

Many Berliners and international fans of air travel regret that it had to come to this. Somehow, a linkage stipulating the closing of the two Berlin airports Tempelhof and Tegel as a condition crept in during the planning for the new Berlin-Brandenburg Airport in Schönefeld, south of Berlin. Allegedly the new airport would otherwise be neither cost-effective nor licensable. Now, Berlin is facing the rare task (and opportunity?) of having two complete airport sites with buildings in the greater urban area at its disposal – and having to repurpose them.

Enlarge image A land sailor and a cyclist enjoy Tempelhof Park (© picture alliance / dpa ) The Tempelhof Airfield, in past times a drill and parade ground before the gates of the Prussian royal residence, has been surrounded by dense settlement since the 19th century. The noise pollution and hazard to the population were the main reasons behind the decision to close the inner-city airport. Air traffic came to an end on October 30, 2008. At first, the Berlin Senate took its time about alternative utilization of the area, as there was no demand for construction land at the height of the real-estate crisis. Nonetheless, the 386-hectare area will be incorporated into the structure of the city as an inner-city quarter. The question is, in what tempo it will take place.

Emotional discussion

Enlarge image A worker installs a sign at Tempelhof Park (© picture alliance / dpa ) Since then, the issue has been and is being discussed in a highly emotionally charged atmosphere. The Senate administration is stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, it is accused of a lack of ideas and action, and on the other the heavily indebted Federal State of Berlin does not have the means to realize grand projects on the vast grounds. It is scarcely possible at this time to draw up plans that are more concrete than those put forward in March 2008 for a “Tempelhof District“ as an address for leading-edge technologies, “innovative living” at the Columbiadamm, and “urban living by the park” in the Berlin district of Neukölln. The Senate’s director of construction is planning an international construction exhibition about whose scope and details nothing has been announced as yet.

Discontent and demonstrations resulted because the Senate at first kept the freed spaces under lock and key. Since May 2010, the “Tempelhof Park” is still nothing more than the airfield’s meadow, open to the public during the day and used intensively. In 2017, an international garden exhibition is to be held, for which sections of the area will be redesigned as a park, but voices are also repeatedly heard in favor of allotment gardens. One hundred and thirty-eight proposals were submitted to the Senate for prototype and interim use, from a Shaolin temple to a minigolf course. An initial competition for landscape planners went into its second round in June 2010, with six works. The final decision concerning the concept for the park landscape will be made in December 2010.

Successful interim uses

Enlarge image Attendees of the 2010 Bread & Butter international fashion trade show in the entrance hall of the former Tempelhof Airport. (© picture alliance / dpa ) The question about what to do with the airport is still unanswered. Currently, the building, built from 1936–41 and the second-largest in the world with a gross floor area of 307,000 m² (3.30 million sq ft), is being rented out for short-term utilization. From 2009 to 2019, the fashion trade fair Bread & Butter is renting all hangars twice a year for a month at a time, both the aprons as well as the main halls. Ice hockey, horse shows, the music trade fair Popkomm and other events take place here. The marketing is so successful that pressure to come up with long-term utilization has let up somewhat.

Nonetheless, serious proposals do exist, for establishing a German center for air and space travel in which the industry is present, in which relevant agencies and organizations are concentrated, and where exhibitions and an aviation museum are feasible. Another proposal is to house the Luftwaffe Museum here – its 5-hectare hangar and unique collection now lying in a Sleeping-Beauty slumber on the other side of the Havel in Berlin-Gatow – in a way that is attractive to the public. The “Tempelhof Forum THF for Culture, Media and the Creative Industry” proposed by the Senate has not yet made decisive progress due to the large number of competing companies.

Enlarge image An aerial view of Tegel Airport (© picture-alliance / akg-images / Reimer Wulf ) Meanwhile, the Senate must also deal with very different issues, because along with the opening of Berlin Brandenburg International on June 3, 2012, the simultaneous closing of Tegel is also approaching. The Tegel airport, in the past an airship landing field and military training area, had been built in 90 days in 1948, during the Berlin Blockade, to supply West Berlin from the air. The present, modern terminal was put into operation in 1974. Von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp), two young architects from Hamburg, designed the prototypical “short-cut airport,” thereby securing their reputation and fame as Germany’s leading architectural firm. Tegel lies somewhat outside of the city, but still has no future prospects because its flight lane is over densely settled residential areas from Marzahn to Wedding.

gmp names the “strategy for a sustainable city,” with which students at the Hamburg Academy for Architectural Culture (aac) came up with proposals for the 466 hectare area, “TXL+” – referencing the airport’s acronym. gmp’s intention was to press ahead, set the tone, provoke position-taking towards an “energy-plus city” with a “triple-zero concept” which would neither consume energy, release emissions nor produce residues. Central points are the preservation and repurposing of the 1974 airport buildings, retention of the runways as relics and design elements or recasting them as pools, and designating construction surfaces for a research campus, an industrial park and remaining areas as natural spaces, all under the banner of a “Green City.”

The strategy worked, the plans are being further advanced by commissioning several planning agencies at once, with the participation of the Fraunhofer Society and the universities. In addition to the Adlershof research campus, itself located on a former airport area, incidentally – the Johannisthal Air Field, opened in 1909 and in service until 1952 – Berlin is gaining another future-oriented urban-development project aimed at researching and demonstrating sustainable urban development. The Tegel area offers ideal conditions for this project.

Written by historian and architecture critic Falk Jaeger.

Translation: Ani Jinpa Lhamo

© Goethe-Institut