SecondOn a cold and rainy night in Berlin in the spring of 2015, an unusual idea appeared. Finnish architect Martti Mela must ride a bicycle home around midnight on his birthday. He still has a short way to go, but it was raining heavily and he was soaked. Suddenly, he heard the rattling of the subway above his head. When he drove along the viaduct of Skalitzer Strasse in Kreuzberg for 10 minutes, he thought of the idea that might soon change the cityscape of Berlin.
He wondered why he couldn’t ride a bicycle under the three-kilometer viaduct-then and now, parking lots, intersections and concrete bollards blocked the way. Bicycle highways will be a solution for cycling in cities that are not affected by the weather. The idea of a bicycle lane under the viaduct has never let him go. A few months later, he joined forces with urban planners, architects and graphic designers from the Paper Airplane Association.
“A new kind of city”
According to project team spokeswoman Johanna Schelle, they all asked themselves similar questions: How has Berlin become more suitable for cycling and more environmentally friendly?What should she do fluidity Look at the city of the future? In November 2015, the association with the goal of “new urbanization” was registered and established. Soon after, the first project named “Radbahn Berlin” appeared. To this end, the underground viaducts of underground lines 1 and 3 will be transformed into a tree-lined bicycle path. The bike path should be more than 9 kilometers long and run directly through the center of Berlin, from Zoologischer Garten train station in Charlottenburg to Oberbaumbrücke in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.
The plan is big: at the Möckernbrücke station, a river pond is planned for the Landwehr Canal. There should be benches, observation decks, cafes and wooden terraces, similar to Manhattan’s High Line. The project is currently in the “laboratory stage”. By 2023, the viaduct will be redesigned into a bicycle path of more than one kilometer in the “Reallabor Radbahn”. To this end, the paper airplane received 3.3 million euros from the federal government and the canton of Berlin between 2019 and 2023. The response seemed great. The citizens clearly expressed their support for bicycle lanes in the test voting.
A bold plan for a three-kilometer unfinished highway
A few kilometers further forward, just southeast of Berlin, the association developed another design, the “Morning Farm”. This visualization shows people harvesting lettuce and green heads in a glass greenhouse, where tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables are grown. Along the strawberry fields, children are guided through the farm and taught about sustainable agriculture-the association is now showing the public this concept of the future. This is the controversial 16th phase of the construction of the Berlin A 100 city highway. It is planned that tens of thousands of cars will roar on the asphalt every day within two years, and solar cells will form a roof on the beekeeping and vegetable plots. The vertical farm is a bold plan for a three-kilometer unfinished highway-the section will cost 700 million euros to complete and spark controversy in the Berlin government alliance.
