Robin Hueppe's research on Berlin's suburbs, from the Holocene to the protests of the 70s: how the landscape shapes residential neighborhoods

Architecture can no longer be limited to buildings. We now know that the landscape shapes the urban environment as much as large-scale planning interventions. Or perhaps more. And given that we live in an era where housing is never enough and cities are facing the effects of climate change, which are hitting densely populated regions especially hard, we can no longer procrastinate on a change of approach that scholars and experts from around the world seem to agree on.

But the landscape isn't just hills and streams. The existing landscape, which architects and planners confront, carries with it the continent's most ancient history, the legacy of centuries-old settlements and the space occupied by the rubble of the Second World War. residential neighborhoods of Berlin are the perfect example of this complex temporal stratification.

Berlin, the natural landscape and mass housing

Berlin is a city that knows how to be dense, in very different ways. According to a 2021 report by the city's Center of Expertise for High-Density Neighborhoods (Kompetenszentrum Großsiedlungen), more than a fifth of the urban population lives in fifty mass housing complexes of the city, which barely cover 5% of the municipal territory. The suburbs, with their post-war residential complexes, seem to have been built on a blank canvas, an empty space that, at best, was still undeveloped. Or at least that's how it must have seemed to the planners of the time. Yet, as Professor Robin Hueppe, which studies very closely the landscapes of Berlin's popular housing estates, there is no such thing as an “empty land” waiting to be shaped by our housing needs.

In a recent article published in the magazine Landezine, Hueppe rereads two peripheral neighborhoods of the German city through their landscape, revealing a complex history of state-driven transformations, hidden war traumas and post-glacial legacies:

“By examining two emblematic examples of Berlin, which emerged in historically distinct spheres, Marzahn in the former East and the Märkisches Viertel in the former West, we can observe how land and water acted as central agents before, during, and after their construction.”

It all starts with the land: the land designated for the construction of mass housing built in the post-war period, especially in the suburbs, was neither an empty space nor a "degraded desert," as the planners of the time described it. It was land already shaped by the conditions of the soil and the postglacial groundwater, "but also from abundant archaeological evidence pointing to medieval agricultural colonization, traces of Prussian expansion eastward, and the remains of a modernizing city clearing away consumer waste and war debris.”. A layered story, which requires a shift of attention – from buildings to the environment on which they were built.

Burying the War: The History That Shaped the Neighborhoods

Today, due to the now traditional shortage of housing in the city, the post-war residential neighborhoods are returning to prominence. However, for contemporary architects and planners, upholding the legacy of these complexes means having to confront the consequences of decisions made in the 1950s. As Hueppe explains, in those years,

By flattening these landscapes into building surfaces, state agencies radically altered existing water bodies and topography to achieve ambitious, politically motivated housing goals. In the West, state planners and developers carried out large-scale evictions, while East Berlin prioritized cost-effective foundation solutions over hydrological durability.

The result is that today these complexes stand on land characterized by surface water pollution and subsoil shifts, and exist in a total disconnect between the buildings and their surrounding environment. Yet it is evident that the environment "shapes the buildings." Analyzing Marzahn and Märkisches Viertel, one can identify some landscape types very specific ones that speak loudly of the most ancient history of Berlin's suburbs. One example above all is that represented by Kienberg, in Marzahn, and from Lübarser Höhe of Märkisches Viertel: the first is an artificial pile of war rubble and building debris, about 100 meters high, nestled between the banks of an ancient river valley; the second, a pile of debris 85 meters high, located between the residential complex and the former route of the Berlin Wall. As Hueppe explains,

After the collapse of the Nazi regime, Hans Scharoun and Reinhold Lingner developed a master plan for Berlin in 1946. The plan envisioned a biomorphic city in which millions of cubic meters of war debris from the city center and demolished anti-aircraft bunkers would be deposited at the edges of post-glacial plateaus, reshaped into topographically harmonious hillocks. These hillocks served as a form of spatial concealment, covering the physical rubble of the destroyed neighborhoods with earth and vegetation. The state buried the everyday signs of German war crimes beneath idealized, therapeutic park landscapes.

The AGE Framework: Assemble, Govern, Interconnect

To provide a reading that can encompass geomorphology, political ideology and environmental forces, Hueppe proposes the AGE Framework (Assembling, Governing, Enmeshing(translated as: assemble, govern, interconnect), developed during a doctoral research project at the Institute for Landscape and Urban Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. Interpreting Berlin's suburbs from this perspective allows us to bring together, into a single, complex framework, the slow formation of the territory during the Holocene, the human and infrastructural interventions of the 20th century, and contemporary experience.

Taking into consideration the two districts of Marzahn and Märkisches Viertel, the slowest temporal layer (assembly) cannot but consider the morphology of the northern Barnim plateau, shaped by the melting waters of the retreating glaciers, and the presence of settlements documented since theBronze Age in the area where both districts are located. The Assembly phase can however also include elements from the pre-modern era: both Marzahn and Märkisches Viertel, in fact, were built taking into account the medieval villages Organized around central common areas and community water retention basins, this is a must.

The level governing shift the time scale to mid-20th century, when landscape design was mobilized to remove the catastrophic debris of World War II in response to the demands of rapid urban expansion. In Marzahn, the mounds were shaped into terraced slopes and pioneer tree species such as ash, poplar, and maple were planted. In West Berlin, however, the Lübarser Höhe served for years as a municipal landfill.

And this is where interconnection comes in (Enmeshing). These artificial environments, in fact, have escaped state control, moved by two almost unstoppable forces: theadvance of nature andappropriation of spaces by the communities that inhabit them, who in the 1970s began protesting the forced coexistence with the landfill and today actively work alongside institutions to combat climate-induced summer droughts and protect the urban wetlands desired by residents themselves. In short, the researcher concludes,

"Looking at these neighborhoods as a whole, the landscape dominates. It is the connective tissue that has adapted and evolved into vibrant, multispecies worlds. Before rushing to implement architectural infill or structural renovations, we must carefully observe what already exists. (...) Much can be built without laying a single foundation."

Here are three insights that might interest you:

Biodiversity: The future of freshwater begins in cities
3-30-300: Are European cities green enough?
The Earth Archive: Rural Landscapes and Sustainability