August 2007. At that time we were at the beginning of our city exploration and one morning we needed to do our planning in a quiet place. Across our U-bahn station, Tempelhof airport – why not? We sat in the perfect airport hall, maps spread on our laps, surrounded by silence. A couple of counters with obscure logos of provincial airlines were humming with little business. On the carrousel five luggage were floating in silence. A movie crew preparing material and lights suggested that the life of the airport was about to change.
Three years went by and we followed the feuilleton of the airport on the local press. Its closure, the referendum, the real estate speculative plans. A few editions of Breand & Butter. Last week we decided to go and have a look.
With our bikes we skirted around Columbiadamm and entered the airport field from the North entrance, the one close to the radar sphere. The space abundance that Berlin grants became here a space pantagruelic feast. An enormous meadow in the middle of town, crossed by a few tarmac lines. Dotted around, and very far from each other, skaters, bikers and kite flyers enjoing space and air.
On the airport parvis a rock band was shooting a video among burning cars and tyres galore. Berlin is a ready-made scenography, probably an open-sky mine for location scouters.
Biking on the runway we experience the same elating experience of our recent picnic on the A40 in the Ruhr. The re-appropriation as citizens, not as Autobahn goers or passengers, of enormous spaces formerly dedicated to noisy, oil-gushing, carbon-dioxide spitting machines. And the space! We feel like children in a candy factory. The size of it! The concrete embrace of the marquise is dwarfed by the size of the open meadows, yet the Tempelhof semi-circular terminal is one of those visible-from-the-moon buildings.
Around Berlin in these days there are a few pianos sitting pretty in the middle of streets and piazzas and this one sits right in the middle of the runway. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one reads the graffiti.
On either side of the runway there are restricted areas, meadows with high grass. Birds nesting there as well as country mice and foxes are the wildlife of the airport, and discrete panels along the tarmac explain the species not to be disturbed in their mating and newborn feeding activities. But there are recreational and catering areas also for humans. A few dedicated grillplatz – an essential Berlin staple – and a bier garten serving all things wurst and kartoffelsalad. And plenty of space for improvised picnics in the grass.
Infrastructure is as usual taken care of efficiently and with dependable, functional design. Bright red containers with white 70s-style silhouettes suggest toilettes. Along the tarmac checkered red-white cement blocks become improvised picnic benches or kitesurf parking stations.
The project for the utilization of the Tempelhof airport grounds seems to be inspired by a philosophy of coexistance of wild/natural and citizen-friendly space, with the “pioneer” idea as a topping. Pioneers of science, technology, design. The concept seems still a little bit foggy but this looseness suits this space, in our view. Like when moving in a new flat, better to learn moving around before cluttering the empty space with horror vacui triggered projects.
