Edward Haines

SURFACE TO SUBSTRATE:

 Reclamation, Regeneration and Remediation

Grounded in three presiding concerns - Reclamation, Regeneration and Remediation – this project proposes a new era for the Autobahnüberbauung Schlangenbader Straße, Berlin. A jolt away from the Automobile centric, Cold-war-era urbanism, the project looks to re-contextualise the area; disassembling one of the two Autobahn bridges, categorising and re-activating the deconstructed road elements, re-orientating their structural attributes and turning them into new Architectures. Drawing on four key threads of exploration established over the course of the year - Regeneration and Reflection, Reorientation and Re-contextualisation, Embedded Memory and Disassembly and Reassembly – and with an underlying interest in surface, the project addresses contemporary contextual and global issues, keeping the environment, ecology and the natural world at its core. 

The scheme itself seeks to reactivate the area’s historic and contemporary ties with agriculture, horticulture and plant sciences, as well as combat the environmental implications (local and global) of the Autobahn and all it represents, proposing a new Institute for Urban Regenerative Agriculture. This Institution looks to regenerate disused, failing or heavily polluted/contaminated urban areas by turning them into productive landscapes/zone. Aiming to establish, practice and teach successful techniques and means of Regenerative Urban Farming that can be translated across Berlin, Germany and Europe. However, one cannot farm (sustainably) without healthy, unpolluted soil; as much of the soil in urban and post-industrial areas is polluted or contaminated from industry and/or fossil-fuel emission, an integral part of the Institution will be a centre for Soil Remediation and top-soil manufacture; building-up soil to be the ecologically rich carbon sink it was meant to be. Remediating the soil of the site itself and implement the Remediation of other sites across Berlin; ultimately aiming to import contaminated bio-mass and export healthy soil. The scheme is therefore threefold; Reclaiming [the Road], Regenerating [the urban land] and Remediating [the soil].

The Project Proposal

With its foundations in the AiV Schinkel competition ‘City / Instead of A104’, (which sought a scheme to revitalise and repurpose the area of Die Autobahnüberbauung Schlangenbader Straße in Berlin after the decommissioning of the Autobahn) the following project looks to breathe life into the once Automobile-centric area of Berlin, in and around ‘the ‘Schlangenbader’. The scheme looks not to destroy the Autobahn, but to regenerate, reorganise and re-contextualise it, ‘quarrying’ one of the two elevated roads (or bridges) through disassembly, and turning the other into an agricultural platform. This agricultural platform will become part of a new proposed Institute for Urban Regenerative Agriculture, an Institution that looks to regenerate disused, failing or heavily polluted/contaminated urban areas by turning them into ‘productive landscapes/zones’. With links to the adjacent Dahlem Centre of Plant Sciences as well as the Max Planck Institute the area is well accustomed to agricultural, horticultural and ecological innovation and research - not to mention the site’s historic use as colony garden’s or ‘Klein Garten’. 

The Institution aims to establish, practice and teach successful techniques and means of Regenerative Urban Farming that can be translated across Berlin, Germany and Europe and ultimately combat the climate crisis. However, pollution and contamination of urban land and soil presents a potential obstacle to this; one cannot farm (sustainably) without healthy, unpolluted soil. As much of the soil in urban and post-industrial areas is polluted or contaminated from industry and/or fossil-fuel emission, it is often poor or unsuitable for agricultural purposes (or any ecological purposes), thus an integral part of the Institution will be a centre for Soil Remediation and top-soil manufacture, specifically for urban environments; building-up soil to be the ecologically rich carbon sink it was meant to be. As well as a centre for research and experimentation,  the Institute will Remediate (clean) the soil of the site itself, and implement the Remediation of other sites across Berlin, and provide a treatment facility  for contaminated soil and residue bio-waste; ultimately aiming to import contaminated bio-mass and export healthy soil.

Heavy duty, chemical soil remediation will mostly be housed in the now vacant Autobahn tunnel within the Schlangenbader building, making the most of the enclosed, acoustically sealed nature of the old Autobahn tunnel. Alongside which, will be the Materials Reclamation Centre, that will process, test and recycle materials reclaimed from the Autobahn’s deconstruction (and from elsewhere). 

The remaining Autobahn Bridge will become a productive zone, producing crops and new top-soil through Regenerative Agricultural processes (and cleaning polluted soil using said processes and cover crop extraction techniques), working on a time-scale of 5+ year cycles. Existing on-site ground surface will also be utilised for Regenerative Agricultural (research and production) purposes - working on a cycle of 1 year - but new facilities will be required on site for research, teaching and accommodation (of students and researchers). Therefore the main Architectural impositions made on the site will be the new Institute for Urban Regenerative Agriculture, an integral part of the Institute being the a centre for Soil Remediation, and working in tandem with the Material Reclamation Centre, in its construction and the wider implementation of the research. 

The institute therefore requires teaching spaces, study spaces, laboratories, agricultural buildings, on-site storage facilities, offices and a visitor centre as well as on-site housing and accommodation facilities for its students and researchers. The scheme thus proposes; Material Reclamation, Soil Remediation and Agricultural Regeneration, and requires an architecture that reflects this, one of reclamation, reuse and [re]growth.

Growing Architecture[s]

In seeking an Architecture of [Re]Growing, in order to both reflect the conceptual tropes of the project and propose a practical, tectonic and sustainable Architecture I have looked towards the function of the scheme. Having brought through the utilisation of the reclamation of the Autobahn from the Competition work, I’ve mostly kept the Kit of Parts (the distilling of the Autobahn structure into usable Architectural and material components of varying scales) and utilised the kit’s structural values (mostly of compression) to compose an external and retaining wall ‘Reclamation layer’. The load of Glulam Timber frame is then held by this ‘Reclamation layer’ and that makes up the bulk of the Architecture’s structure. I have then looked towards Regeneration and Remediation to further define the Architecture. 

Regenerative Agriculture has been proven to work as a more productive, cheaper, more nutritious and more space efficient means of food production than most industrialised forms of Agricultural Practice we see today due to its faith in nature. It allows natural systems to work and by collaborating with ecosystems, not trying to overrule them and create homogenous, single cash crop zones of production that only end up destroying the soil and requiring synthetic fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides. Gabe Brown, a leading voice for Regenerative Agriculture and believer in addressing problems by biological means not chemical means, states that for every insect species that is a pest, “there are 1700 that are beneficial”, therefore by destroying every insect in the vicinity because of a few that might damage a crop, farmers will create more problems for themselves in the long run.

Thus, in order to try to attain a truly sustainable Architecture, I am going to apply the same principles to the building as that will be exercised within it; those of working with nature, not against it, furthermore, to not destroy a landscape (urban or rural) in order to control it. Looking back to a roofing material that was once widely used for practical reasons throughout Northern Europe – and still remains on many agricultural buildings in Germany – I’ve chosen to roof my Architectures with Thatch.