Exkursion to Plattenbaum

Our second stop on Wednesday took us to the former Tegel airport site, where we met the two founders of PlattenBaum, Maayan Strauss and Kerem Halbrecht, on the premises of Gut. The two Israeli architects gave us an exciting insight into their work and showed us projects that they had realized before PlattenBaum was founded.

Kerem’s presentation of “72 Hour Urban Action”, a participatory architecture and urban development format in which buildings are constructed together with local residents in an open competition over the course of just three days, was particularly impressive. Maayan also provided insights into her previous artistic projects, which dealt with mobility, space and new forms of coexistence.

They then presented their joint project Mini Biosphere to us. This is a mobile greenhouse for public urban spaces the size of a parking lot. It requires neither foundations nor connections, as it is based on the principle of the circular economy. Rainwater is used for irrigation, solar energy drives the water circulation and composting provides nutrients and heating. This makes the structure easy to place on car-free streets, in courtyards, parking lots or brownfield sites. The project aims to raise awareness of responsible consumption and sustainable nutrition. Despite all this, it has so far met with little interest from the city of Berlin, and the first model was sold to Luxembourg instead.