Green Development in Berlin:An east German machine factory is being converted into luxurious eco-friendly apartments in Berlin. Kevin O'Connorreports
To the visitor, the uncut grass between the tramlines off Strasse Rosa Luxembourg may strike as untypical Germanic. What - the nation most identified with order letting the grass grow ragged under their feet? But it's all part of the new eco-Germany, which gave Europe its most potent political Green parties.
The grass, especially in the East, is encouraged to grow as part of nature's bounty to urban living. Soon, the grass will be growing on the roofs of new apartment complexes, helping to provide eco-heat and running rainwater into tanks.
New urban developments must be eco-friendly in a whole range of areas - light measured for its heating rays through walls, tempered glass enclosing gases in large panels which is powered into heat in winter and coolant in summer, hence an abundance of glass in newer buildings.
Rather than fleeing to the countryside for the commuter-doubtful benefits of rural retreat, this concept aims at bringing rural life into the heart of Berlin. Rainwater is re-routed to boilers for piped heating, as is domestic waste water to flush toilets. Thermostats are digitally monitored to adjust angles of large solar panels to optimum sun rays, even in winter.
A roof on the seventh floor will have 23 allotments for growing fruit and veg; other areas will provide a putting green for golfers and a lounge area under the sky.
All in all, it's not difficult to satirise the German capacity for green order: "Yes, we have ways of controlling your carbon emissions . . ." Standing on top of the sixth floor of an old East German machine factory, it's wise to cast such satire aside, before it becomes vertiginous.
In the company of Orco executives, I am looking from the East into the West, at all the landmarks dutifully visited by tourists, from the TV tower nearby, to the Berlin Cathedral in the mid-distance, to the Reichstag by the Brandenburg Gate in the far distance.
I'm level with them, getting the angle that will be a selling point when this massive 19th century block becomes yet another trophy building in Neu Berlin. FehrBelliner, a visionary creation of concrete, glass and steel, is a model of the future being developed by Orco Group, a pan-European player whose iconic urban creations are best seen in their other developments across cities from Moscow to Munich, including Paris, Prague and Zagreb.
The company moved in tandem with the collapse of communism in the early 1990s, dating its growth to its capital exploitation of the vast tracts of space for the new consumer order which they correctly perceived would replace failed Soviet socialism.
With spending power of €500 million from investors Orco retained the architectural practice of Eike Becker and Helge Schmidt, who have been marking the changed landscape of Berlin since the early 1990s, picking up clutches of international design awards along the way.
FehrBelliner will be a signature building, on a scale that rides on top of the current changes in Mitte, formerly "middle" of Berlin, half-a-century languishing under the grey, repressive hand of Honecker and his communist cohorts whose iron fist hammered the life out of East Berlin.
Perversely, by keeping it subdued, they also preserved its 20th century motifs of what is now art deco - a human scale of terraced houses, offices and factories. Unwittingly of course, for that was not their motive.
Because for every cloud there's a silver lining, this Mitte area of Berlin is now the desired district among the young, who have thronged here from all over Europe, to live, work and study - sometimes juggling all three in their enthusiasm for boulevard living. Look anywhere, morning and evening, and the streets have a steady stream of commuting cyclists, mostly in their twenties and thirties. And at weekends, their hunds canter ahead, without lead or hindrance, pacing to their owner's direction along cycle lanes.
This is the living city of the future, though it will take another generation of their earnings before they can afford to live in the Orco building of FehrBelliner. But then, with prices at €1 million for the penthouses and declining by floor to lofts at €300,000, flats at €250,000 and townhouses at - well, whatever the market will bear in 2008. This complex is as much a currency market for Berlin's future prosperity as a confident icon of urban change.
"Yes, about €1 million for the penthouses," says Karl-Jurgen Zeller, senior sales manager for the complex, which he says will have all the services of civilised living. With its own shops, crèches and playgrounds, augmented by a 20m pool and gymnasia, sections of the concept are already booked by buyers, even as the actual sites of their future habitation have yet to fall under the demolition ball.
By then, when they arrive, not only will the half-a-million or so bricks that make up the gigantic factory walls have been levelled - so will some of the way we live now. By the time the first inhabitants arrive, they will make their way by touching the screen of their mobile or Blackberry, signalling in sequence to gain entrance from the street, to a waiting lift, with the microwave, bath and mood lighting already programmed by the same method.
Vorsprung durch "intelligent domestic technology" as Zeller says. Truly, we have ways of making the future.
ORCO Germany
0049 30440 1230 pjaenisch@orcogroup.com
