Hinrich Baller

There is a long tradition of ‘Biotope City’ in the great visions of urban landscapes, from the baroque plan of embellishment to the urban landscape of Hans Scharoun in his Project Berlin Capital. During centuries concepts as those of the Garden City movement and the utopias of the alpine city (Bruno Taut) have accompagnied the urban philosophy of compensation of the building density and of ecological sustainability.

While the romantic ideas of Pueckler and, in the long run, of Lenné and Schinkel, too, became heritage of a holistic concept of design under the premonition of the raising industrial century, now, 150 years later, at the end of the industrial century and at the beginning of the information century, we feel obliged to formulate an artistic anwer by designing a unity of building and ecological living area, which should be a sign of our time as well as a sign of our own design endeavourment, using our own means, as we did for instance at the Babelsberger Parc project - a project which shows a maximum of good living conditions at the site of a little artificially arranged pond, in spite of - or perhaps just because of the highest building density possible and the highest economy of land use. This gives , in a very dense, but no less romantic manner, an nowadays answer to the landscape vision of Herman Pueckler. It confronts the new time, even being able to tackle with a traffic high way as a technical challange. The noise protection for the new neighbourhood towards the high way and, actually also the design of a structured form of the rows of buildings which forms another kind noise absorption in the direction of the parc - the effects of these would radiate quiety in both directions, being a sign of harmonisation of the living space. In the essay, as a contribution to Biotope City, this design approach will be illustrated by 5 examples of different dimensions (up to 250 unit) at locations of the former ancient valley which meanwhile has become artifical.