Garden Laboratories Cologne Rhenish Green Belt

The garden laboratories are part of the outer green belt of Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine. They contribute to making the entire green belt a continuous experience.

The garden laboratories are part of Cologne's Outer Green Belt on the right bank of the Rhine. They contribute to completing the entire green belt as a ring of public, usable open spaces, making it possible to experience and qualify them throughout.
The model project tests how an open space typology that creates structurally rich and ecologically valuable open spaces for all can look. As a mixture of park and urban gardening, the garden labs dissolve the classic allotment garden plot and transform it into a variety of different garden typologies. In doing so, they include a wide variety of garden themes in different spaces that together create a new kind of park for interaction and integration.
In view of the narrowed margins in public budgets, strategies for securing public open spaces that would otherwise give way to redensification are in demand today. Cologne is leading the way here with a community-oriented, user-supported urban development. The garden laboratories are being developed with simple means and broad participation in order to initiate new possibilities for open space participation.