Neue Kreuzberger Mischung – Kooperative Szenarien der Nachverdichtung für den Rathausblock in Berlin

“Neue Kreuzberger Mischung” documents a university-civil society cooperation between the Technische Universität Berlin and the initiative Stadt von Unten from 2014/2015. In the context of an urban design studio, the partners developed designs towards a community-oriented development of the so-called Rathausblock in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The 5-ha Rathausblock site, also known as the Dragonerareal, has been one of the most important model projects of cooperative urban development between the public sector and civil society in Berlin since 2019. Local urban political initiatives played a decisive role in this transition from a profit-oriented to a cooperative, public welfare-oriented planning project. Since 2011, they have lobbied for a communal as well as resident-controlled development, low-priced rental concepts and the preservation of the then current use of the area. In 2014/2015, prior to the decisive turning point and at the invitation of the Stadt von Unten initiative, the Chair for Urban Design and Urbanization (CUD) at Technische Universität Berlin conceived the design studio in order to examine the development-policy demands of the initiatives in terms of their feasibility. The urban policy demands were exemplarily translated by students of the CUD into two scenarios and four projects of an alternative urban planning. In addition to the implementation of this program, the question arose of how to deal with the existing, partly ensemble-protected area, the urban development constraints, and the “Critical Reconstruction” and “European City” paradigms that dominate planning in Berlin. “Neue Kreuzberger Mischung” documents the conversations, analyses, mappings, scenarios, and projects that emerged in the course of the cooperation, as well as the didactics and methodology of the design studio.