After decades of standstill, a new urban location with a wide range of possible uses is to emerge on the site of the former freight yard in Hanover City. Two conceptual questions were at the heart of the concept for the outdoor facilities for this place: First the question of how to create an appropriate transition from former usage to new program without any nostalgia, and secondly the question of how to create a place with both functional and aesthetic value, which integrates leisure and infrastructural qualities at the same time.
As a result, our landscape design bridges old and new elements as well as functional and attractive qualities and formulates a hybrid programs under careful consideration of the characteristics of the site. The black and white color layout references the three streets – two excising ones and a new one – who situate the site in a connective hub. New parking lots react to this functionality, while a skate park finds place in the niche of the busy site as its noise blends with the surrounding.
The outdoor spaces also anchor the new building with its planned delicatessen and sports program in the wider urban realm. The ground is subdivided into the spacious forecourt, the northern parking lot with delivery zone, and the spacious city terrace. Especially the forecourt has a clearly public character. It hosts space for gastronomic terraces, the skate park, parking for bicycles and cars, as well as green spaces.
All areas including the inner mall are visually connected by the coherent graphic pattern of white stripes on the smooth dark paving. The vertical elements, such as walls, stairs and supporting walls, are made of black concrete, which creates an suspenseful contrast to the building’s historic clinker façade and clearly differentiates between old and new structures.
Location: Hanover, Germany
Client: Aurelis Real Estate GmbH & Co. KG
Landscape Architecture: Topotek 1
Collaboration: AFF Architekten
Direct Commission: 2016
Planning: 2016-2018
Completion: 2019
Size: 9.700 m2
Photos: Hanns Joosten
Designers: Topotek 1 /
