Old town from the retort: That is the vision of the Berlin Mitte Foundation for the Molkenmarkt in 2028.
Photo: Stiftung Mitte Berlin
A storm is sweeping through Berlin. There is a storm of indignation over the decision by Senate Building Director Petra Kahlfeldt (independent, for SPD) that the competition for the future design of the whey market ended without a winning design being chosen. Around 200 initiatives, institutions and individuals were the first to sign the »Call for a Social and Ecological Model Quarter at Molkenmarkt« published on Thursday.
“Hopeful developments” have taken place at this location in recent years. For the first time, “an inner-city quarter was deliberately confronted with the requirements of the construction transition.” In a complex, two-year participation process, eight guidelines were developed that bring together affordable housing and inexpensive cultural spaces in a dense urban environment in the historic city center with the requirements of climate change and climate resilience. In addition, the plots should not be privatized, but developed by state-owned housing associations.
The procedure also showed that these guidelines can also be implemented, according to the call. The first-placed design by OS Arkitekter with Czyborra Klingbeil Architekturwerkstatt fully corresponded to this. Even the proposal from the late architect Bernd Albers, together with Silvia Malcovati and Vogt Landscape Architects, which deviated significantly from the specifications in the interim colloquium last year and also won first place, has come much closer to the solutions of the colleagues in the process and has a stronger social and ecological orientation Experienced.
»It is all the more incomprehensible that these procedures ended on September 13, 2022 without the selection of a draft for further work. This procedure is in contrast to the advertisement,” says the appeal, which was signed by the Berlin regional association of the Association of German Architects, by the Deutsche Wohnen & Co expropriation initiative and by Theresa Keilhacker, President of the Berlin Chamber of Architects.
The chair of the jury, Christa Reicher, and the Senate building director made every effort to explain at the press conference on September 14 that it was never intended to choose a winner. This description not only contradicted the text of the competition, but also the »nd« answer given by the project manager for the Molkenmarkt in the urban development administration to a citizen inquiry. As late as June 7, he explained that “in the last step of the workshop process, the jury should select a design whose quarter-related, conceptual statements are strong enough to define the basic principles of use and design of the entire quarter”. In its answer to the precise questions from »nd«, the urban development administration does not go into detail at all, but simply describes what has happened so far and what is still to happen. She had four days.
“This arbitrary termination of the process disregards the high idealistic and economic investments of all architects participating in the process and in particular the winners of the competition, who have committed themselves to the second workshop process with very committed contributions in full confidence,” says the appeal. The requirement: »The procedure must therefore be completed, as provided for in the competition, while maintaining the authorship of a team and with the selection of a draft for further work, the further procedure must be transparent and compliance with the guidelines must be ensured.«
One may or may not consider it a coincidence that just on Tuesday the »Foundation Mitte Berlin – For the Heart of the City«, founded in July, announced its goals in a press release: namely almost the entire area surrounded by the Spree and the Stadtbahn with the television tower in the centre to be built on the historic street plan and with historicizing buildings. The whole thing is garnished with visualizations of how the replica of Berlin’s city center from 1928 could look like: very stony and not very barrier-free, because entrance steps lead to many old building imitations in the pictures.
An inclusive society and the climate crisis apparently play no role in the imagination of founder Marie-Luise Schwarz-Schilling. After all, the heiress to the Sonnenschein battery factory that was sold long ago is a proud 90 years old. Older people may know her husband, the former Federal Post Minister Christian Schwarz-Schilling (CDU), who at the time was considered the “minister with the most affairs” by Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU). The affairs were mostly triggered by the involvement of his wife’s company in the minister’s political decisions.
Local history was her favorite subject at school, and Marie-Luise Schwarz-Schilling explains that the foundation is intended to be the »engine for the recovery of Berlin’s old town«. When it comes to such a concern, Benedikt Goebel is not far in Berlin, who is consequently also the deputy chairman of the foundation. Since 2011, he has been the spokesman for the “Urban Planning Group”, which he co-founded and in which Petra Kahlfeldt, today’s Senate Building Director, was also involved. Their goal: A small-scale subdivision and partial privatization of the properties on Molkenmarkt.
The foundation’s team is completed by the real estate manager David Kastner, whose company Pentanex, according to the website, has ensured the “improvement” of the “rental performance” – i.e. increased rental income – in many centrally located Berlin properties, as well as a project manager.
»It’s pretty crazy what’s going on here. It’s about questionable architectural processes that always have to be seen together with the question of land,” said architect Roberta Burghardt last Saturday at a panel discussion on the Molkenmarkt about the processes. She calls it a “conservative project to rebuild the old town, mixed with the project of privatization.” Small houses lead to very high construction costs, which would torpedo the goal of building urban housing. The event was part of the festival organized by Deutsche Wohnen & Co expropen on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz one year after the successful referendum.
»It was a very important direction of the last legislature that we can clearly secure a publicly controlled urban development policy for the future. That was already up for discussion in the coalition negotiations a year ago,” explains Katalin Gennburg, spokeswoman for urban development for the left-wing faction in the House of Representatives. “Moreover, the whey market was very clearly presented by the Social Democrats in the coalition negotiations as a blueprint for reversing this publicly controlled urban development policy,” the politician continued. “They said very clearly that they want a mixed neighborhood with diverse ownership structures. That may even sound compatible, but it opens the floodgates for all private investors.« The question of diversity »may sound fragrant to the ears of the left, but in the mind of the right it means: diversity through ownership.«
The Werdersche Markt in Mitte shows where this can lead. At the beginning of the 2000s, plots of land were sold to private individuals at bargain prices, on which narrow so-called townhouses were then built. Architect Burghardt estimates the total costs at the time at around 800,000 euros per unit. Ten years later, the first houses were sold for 8 million euros. One is currently on offer for 11 million euros, and another is being advertised for 13,900 euros a month without rent.
The key to the implementation of the projects is the overriding of the participation process. Even MPs from the coalition factions complain that they are not properly informed and involved. Green urban development politician Julian Schwarze told »nd« not only the process at Molkenmarkt but also those for the redesign of Jahn Sports Park and Stadium in Prenzlauer Berg and Checkpoint Charlie. “The subject of Jahn-Sportpark has been raised and criticized by me several times in various formats to the Senate,” he reports. The specialist committees for sport and urban development were intended as guests at a jury meeting. However, neither of the two was invited as a committee.
“It seems that the administration of SPD Senator Andreas Geisel is either completely disorganized and chaotic or deliberately leaves out committees or organizations,” says Schwarze. That costs time and »ultimately causes unnecessary delays in construction projects«. Katalin Gennburg from the left faction confirms the representation. The urban development administration does not respond at all to a request from “nd” for a statement on this.
In August, the Investment Advisory Board went public. Members of the volunteer committee responsible for further developing the guidelines for citizen participation reported that Geisel and Kahlfeldt were stalling their work. At the time, three planned meetings had already been canceled at short notice by the administration for incomprehensible formal reasons. The behavior also enraged Dennis Buchner (SPD), the President of the House of Representatives. In a letter to the Advisory Board available to “nd” three weeks ago, Buchner wrote: He “very much regrets” that the urban development administration “gave the impression that the Berlin House of Representatives would in any way torpedo the meetings of the Advisory Board, which was caused by the misleading claims of the Senate Building Director awakened, still has not corrected it.”
Buchner’s intervention apparently worked. The advisory board is to meet officially for the first time on October 17, reports Hendrikje Klein, spokeswoman for citizen participation for the left-wing faction. “Andreas Geisel believes that he can go into reverse again on his own,” she comments on the events to “nd”. “As long as he’s in politics, he should know that he’s stopping processes that are in his interest,” Klein continued.
