In the centre of Kreuzberg, in the east of Berlin, is the landscape wound left behind by the railway, which until 2011 defined the district. Over the years, nature has started to take over the abandoned railway, which German urban development agency Atelier Loidl has taken the opportunity to transform into a diverse park forest, using the infrastructure elements left behind.
Not far from the centre of Berlin is the former GDR
state railway, which was severely damaged in 1945 and then left to fall into complete disrepair. The Gleisdreieck junction is also the site of the once magnificent Anhalter station, of which only the facade remains. After almost six decades of waiting, this neglected area could now take on a new role and begin to be reintegrated into the fabric of the city.
In 2006, the city's leaders launched an international landscape design competition to find the best way to use this area. The aim was to reintegrate the site into the urban fabric and to create an appropriate leisure and recreation area for the densely populated neighbourhood.
The rehabilitation process, which took several years, has created a fundamental urban space that has recaptured the romance of "wild" nature, with its varied and luxuriant vegetation, all with a completely conscious design to make everything seem like a work of unleashed sprawl.
The first phase of the new public park on the site of the railway triangle was completed in 2011 and completed with the third phase, the Flaschenhalssal, inaugurated in 2014, which is characterised by the different ways in which the remaining railway tracks have been recycled: sometimes as footpaths, sometimes as "wild" landscapes.
