First prizeGerman Landscape Architecture Award 2011

Jury verdict: In a development process lasting many years, a public space with very diverse structures was created on the site of the former North Station. Situated inaccessibly in the Wall strip for decades, the site has been gradually reconnected with its surroundings since 2002 and returned to the city as an ecologically and socially activated space.

In the course of implementing compensation and replacement measures, the authors designed a "green framework" of extensively managed meadows and wooded areas with simple means, which gives the park a lively, almost natural atmosphere. Wide open spaces and dense growth have a space-creating effect and develop a great atmospheric power. Intensive uses are embedded in these structures at important urban locations, opening up the park above all to the leisure and recreational needs of the city's inhabitants. In doing so, it has succeeded in a convincing way to unite the basically competing aspects of ecology and intensive park use in an overall concept. Thus, areas that are protected from trespassing by simple demarcations can be found next to highly frequented sports and play areas.

The authors paid particular attention to the entrance areas of the site. In a clever way, entrance situations were created here that weave the park into the urban space that is growing back together and, above all, represent important points of orientation for the cross-connections.

As in the concept, a high level of design quality is evident in the formation of the details. With great attention fragments of the former railway facilities as well as the former course of the wall were tracked down and integrated in a very natural way. Newly added elements are presented in a modern formal language that translates the diversity of places and uses into aesthetic images.

In this way, it has been possible to develop the park at Nordbahnhof into a highly attractive urban park that uses the instruments of contemporary urban planning in an exemplary manner for the processual valorization of public spaces.