Case study - Tegel airport, Germany

The airport was built in 1948 by the command of the French Authorities who, at the time, were responsible for the Tegel area post-World-War-II. The whole construction of the airport has been executed in just 90 days on an earlier military training site and had the longest runway in Europe at the time with 2.428 metres. By the year 1975 it became Berlin’s most important passenger airport and still holds that merit to this day (Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH, nd). Based on a traffic report by Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Verkehrsflughäfen (2020), it was ranked as being the fourth largest airport according to the number of passengers in Germany. In 1975, a five-year construction of a new terminal started with designs of GMP Architects. The terminal had an innovative hexagonal shape (Figure 26) that served the purpose of allowing the passengers to have short distances between the aircraft and parking lot (Ortner, 2020).

Tegel Airport (TXL), much like Tempelhof Airport, has been declared as a heritage-protected monument. In 2019 TXL has been added to the list of historical monuments due to its influence and relevance in architectural, traffic and social history.

(Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, 2019)

Fig. 26: Tegel Airport is built in a hexagonal shape. Adapted from (Google Earth, 2020)

Like Tempelhof Airport, the Tegel Airport was also planned to be closed after the proper expansion of Schönefeld Airport which would also include the construction of the new Brandenburger Airport in its vicinity. Nevertheless, this has been postponed seven times due to the opening of the Brandenburger Airport being delayed from its initially planned opening in 2011. (Ortner, 2020)

Since the Tegel Airport is yet to be closed for the past nine years, barely any of the renovations needed have been performed on its site. The building has been left looking worn-out, and no necessarily new improvements to the airport traffic have been realised. The car roads to and at the airport are almost constantly over-crowded as the airport was initially designed to handle 2,5 million passengers per year as opposed to the 22 million passengers it handled in 2019. This has also led to severe technical problems at the terminals since the second largest terminal B, which was planned to double the capacity of the airport, was never built due to expenses and instead only smaller, temporarily planned terminals were built. The focus and the money of the city officials have been invested in the building and later renovations of the Brandenburger Airport rather than at the old Tegel Airport handling momentarily most of the air traffic in Berlin. (Ortner, 2020)

Due to the fact that the closure of the airport was planned already for 2011, a plan to repurpose the building and rest of the area has been created a long time ago. As of May 2020, The Brandenburg Airport has received its operating license and its opening is set to be at the end of October 2020 (Deutsche Welle, 2020). This would be the exact date when Tegel Airport would close, and the works for repurposing it can finally start.

The concept

In 2015 the Tegel Projekt GmbH released a report where they described their plans for the Berlin Airport, referring to the project as Urban Tech Republic (Figure 27).

According to this report, the future use of the airport will be directed mainly towards research and industry.

Fig. 27: Visualisation of the future Tegel Airport. (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2015b)

With 150.000 m², the airport will offer a massive surface which can be rented out to companies and utilised as offices. The site is planned to facilitate various research groups, over 800 companies of different proportions and even a university campus (Figure 28) (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2015a). The project concentrates on multiple advanced and greener solutions concerning mobility, energy consumption, recycling, sustainability in construction and biodiversity (Bahu, et al., 2017). For example, the mobility concept aims at creating more environmentally friendly ways of transport within the city. It will include a large array of wide biking paths as well as multiple stations for public transport, thus minimising the need for a private car to reach the area (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2015a).

One of the most decisive advantages that the future technology and industry park has is its immediate proximity to the centre of Berlin. The industry park and campus area will be located only 8 km away from the city centre and a 30-minute drive away from the new Brandenburg Airport. This gives the area an indisputable advantage over the other similar tech parks which are typically located dozens of kilometres away from city centres (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2015a).

Fig. 28: Planned usage of the Tegel Airport. (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2015a)

It is also worth mentioning that a large proportion of the airport area will be turned into a residential neighbourhood called The Schumacher Quartier. It is planned to include 5.000 apartments and thus tackle the rising problem of lack of housing in Berlin (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2015a). The neighbourhood will also be designed in a way that supports the development of Berlin as a future greener city. For example, alternative transport and travel options will be supported over car traffic by building a comprehensive bike lane network and encouraging campus students and future tech park workers to live nearby their workplace (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2020).

The renovations

As mentioned earlier, the terminal buildings of the airport are in desperate need of renovation and refurbishment. These are planned to be performed in a way which minimises their negative impact on the environment. In 2016 the German Sustainable Building Council (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen, DGNB e.V) awarded the campus project with the Platinum Certification in their “City District” category due to the project´s environmentally friendly and energy-efficient construction designs.

(Tegel Projekt GmbH, nd)

Interestingly, the existing airport buildings are planned to be renovated in a way which leaves them with some marks of their previous lives. The inner spaces of the current terminal halls and hangars will not be covered entirely with new and fresh surfaces but instead will keep their identity and part of their urban rawness. Not only does this complement to the personality of the area but also has an environmental aspect to it since the renovations will not require all of the old materials and elements to be replaced with new ones. (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2015a)

Terminal D is planned to be the first building to undergo refurbishing. It will be the home of the Urban Tech Republic base offices along with start-up centres, co-working rooms.

The current terminal A will host the future university, whereas the terminal B will become the main building of the industry park hosting most notably the central offices of Urban tech Republic. The air traffic control tower will be turned into an event and conference centre. (Tegel Projekt GmbH, 2015a)