Spatial Rhythm at the Bornstedter Feld / National Garden Show in Potsdam

This competition entry focused on a present-day counterpart of the complex context of the competition – the Potsdam cultural landscape with its many famous castles, gardens, and parks – the composition of both temporally changing and constant elements and spatial arrangements, i.e. rhythm.

This is apparent in the overall spatial design through the structuring of the interspaces, their sequence, and in their use and repetition. The intention of the design was a national garden show and park concept based on the principle of time – a park as a framework that is open to development and change. The fundamental elements of landscape design serve as a means of achieving this: a playful and creative way of dealing with the topography, the circulation system and the spatial composition of different uses, plants as a factor of design and a visible temporary manifestation that flourishes and withers as the seasons change, the contrast of uncontrolled vegetative change and creative intervention, a reference to the past through the new interpretation of monumental features, and themes such as discovery, decay, backdrop and geometry, and the staging of the perspective.