Lwork together as much as possible, and as little as possible against, nature. This is the great intuition of the French landscape architect Gilles Clément, formulated in his book The garden in motion as early as 1991. The plants travel through the seeds carried by the wind and the gardener instead of imposing a pre-packaged scheme can collaborate, indulge, be amazed by the surprises that nature reserve, becoming a “guardian of the unpredictable”. In Berlin, there is an urban park that has embraced this idea. Is called Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgeländeoccupies about 18 hectares and is an urban oasis much loved by the inhabitants.
The Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände is an 18-hectare park: until the early 1950s it was a stopover for freight trains and locomotives. photo Giovanni Chiaramonte
“In 2002, visitors were 18 thousand a year, last year we exceeded one hundred thousand”, said manager Rita Surhoff. This year the park has risen to the headlines because it is the protagonist of the thirty-second edition of Carlo Scarpa International Garden Award, created and organized by the Benetton Studies and Research Foundation since 1990. The Südgelände is part of a vast network of public parks in the German capital, but compared to the others it boasts a truly unique history. And his experience can also be inspiring for us.
Urban ecology
It is in fact a new kind of park, different from public spaces designed starting from the nineteenth century such as the Milanese Parco Sempione – to purify the urban atmosphere and also to offer a place for recreation in a green space shaped by man. At Südgelände, you can walk among railway rails in the midst of which birch and poplar trees grow, ruins that testify to an industrial past and the creations of artists, in a luxuriant and surprising nature. In the right season, it can happen to see a herd of sheep grazing the grass in the meadows, thus providing a natural and inexpensive mowing. And in spring, it is accompanied by the hum of wild bees and the song of nightingaleswho have chosen the park as their home.
In 2021, more than one hundred thousand visitors to the Schöneberger Südgelände park
From the end of the nineteenth century, there was a railway marshalling yard here. The end of the Second World War and the division of the city with the Wall made this area unused: the last train passed through it in 1952. The control of the land passed to the GDR and for fifty years the old airport became no man’s land. Ingo Kowarik, ecologist and university lecturer in Berlin, is one of the minds who made the park possible. “I entered this area for the first time in the late seventies, when I was a student, secretly because it was forbidden,” he recalls. “I saw the industrial landscape which had gradually been colonized by plants. It fascinated me so much that I decided to specialize in Urban Ecology ». Little by little, the inhabitants realize that this forbidden place has become a treasure trove of biodiversity a stone’s throw from the center. When deforestation is envisaged in the early 1980s to reuse the area, a popular movement arises to prevent it. The project is set aside and a process begins that will lead to the sale of the land by the railways to the Berlin Senate, the city’s executive body, which then entrusts its management to Grün Berlin, a municipal company that deals with sustainable urban development.
A model to be inspired by
“The park was officially born in 1999 thanks to the complicity of three factors: the ecologist who glimpses a new idea of nature, a management that collaborates with associations and citizenship for a social goal, and a community of artists, Odious, who works iron and here finds an expressive possibility “comments Luigi Latini , president of the scientific committee of the Carlo Scarpa Prize and university professor of Landscape Architecture at the Iuav University of Venice. The park today is an excellent synthesis between wild urban nature, railway landscape and recreational project. The apparent neglect is just an illusion: the vegetation is allowed to grow spontaneously but there is no lack of cautious and careful human intervention. For example, by eradicating the very invasive Japanese Polygon (Fallopia japonica). If nature were left totally free, the park today would be a dense forest. This idea allows for a green space to be enjoyed at low cost: limited work by municipal gardeners and low costs for plants. It could also be an inspiration to us, obviously respecting the climatic conditions and our vegetation? “There is no shortage of abandoned areas, in fact I think they are growing” adds Latini. “The problem is that we focus on designed parks, with refined design solutions, which then involve management difficulties and easily perish”.
Redevelopments also in Italy
There is no shortage of positive signs. A virtuous project already carried out is that of Dora Park in the area of the former Fiat workshops and Michelin in Turin, which demonstrates how the scenographic industrial archeology scenarios can go hand in hand with vegetation and usability. In Milan, the redevelopment works of seven railway yards are continuing, occupying one million square meters, of which 65 per cent are expected to be used as green areas. The pandemic has favored a change of mentality, which sees us all closer to nature. Would a Südgelände be possible in Italy? “We have also carried out urban regeneration operations, but the problem is soil contamination” explains Damiano Di Simine, scientific director of Legambiente Lombardia. “The Italian law protects the health of citizens better: if the soil is contaminated, it is first necessary to reclaim it, otherwise nothing can be done. If you do analyzes in a disused railway yard, you can find substances that involve remediation. German law also imposes risk controls, but allows temporary uses pending reclamation ». Of course, nature gives us a hand: there are plants that can improve the quality of the soil, but the assessment must be made on a case-by-case basis. And to really protect the soil from degradation, a single European directive would be needed.
The award-winning park in Treviso
In the park there are numerous tracks that are almost “swallowed up” by the trunks of rebel trees. Photo Giovanni Chiaramonte
Since 1990, the Carlo Scarpa International Garden Prize has identified a place worthy of recognition through extensive research and study. The chosen site is full of values related to nature, memory and invention. Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände, this year’s winner, expresses “Berlin urban nature”, combining people’s aspirations, contemporary landscape culture and an ecological focus on the city. The celebrations will open on Friday 13 May with an exhibition in Treviso, the projection of the docufilm created by Davide Gambino on the park and the presentation of a volume edited by Patrizia Boschiero, Thilo Folkerts and Luigi Latini. The award ceremony on Saturday afternoon at the Teatro Comunale di Treviso: it will be collected by the park manager Rita Surhoff, by the sculptor Klaus Duschat of Odious and by the ecologist Ingo Kow.
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