Paradise in Berlin
The wall that divided Berlin, with its interstitial spaces and seemingly idyllic enclaves is no longer visible; and yet when people think of Berlin, they think more about these things than about the city’s landscape of lakes and rivers, or its beech and pine forests. This associative presence of long-gone urban features demonstrates the important role visual ideas, stories, and context play in the perception of spaces, locations, and landscapes; it shows the interwovenness of imagination, knowledge, and the genuine perception of space.
The landscape of the Mark Brandenburg essentially serves as the open space between dense urban areas: the Spree and Havel rivers, the urban forests, the various castles and their grounds, the expansive Tiergarten, old and new parks, and generous urban plazas in all of the city‘s districts are all part of a sprawling green image of the city, which is especially noticeable to the city‘s visitors. The closing of the inner-city airports Tempelhof and Tegel will open up additional large open areas. To some people this amount of urban open space appears to be a kind of paradise. But the city‘s myths, which represent a variety of different worlds, and which tell stories of dreams and reality, are also somewhat paradisiacal, for they encounter each other in public places. Future urban development needs to take this into account.
The Wuhletalniederung (a low-lying area along the banks of the Wuhle River) is one of eastern Berlin’s largest contiguous greenbelts. The 1987 Berlin Garden Show was located on this site, which was expanded and renamed rholungspark Marzahn (a recreational park in the district of Marzahn) after reunification. The park, that charges an entrance fee, positively changed the image of the prefabricated tower blocks which surround it, thus demonstrating one of the different instruments that can run parallel to each other and be used for the development and administration of urban open space.
The Chinese Garden of the Reclaimed Moon, which was a gift from the People‘s Republic of China on the occasion of Germany‘s reunification, served as the cornerstone for the Gardens of the World in Marzahn in 2000. These gardens contain several “small paradises” within one large paradise. In a relatively compact space visitors can “travel” through authentic foreign gardens and cultures. This objective encounter with something foreign, i.e., a concrete experiencing of space, may very well lead to new thoughts about these “paradises.”