Bürgerpark Grüne Mitte Weinstadt by A24 Landschaft

A participatory agricultural park as a new center

With the Bürgerpark Grüne Mitte, a special new center has been created for the polycentric wine town consisting of five individual communities:
A park hybrid of agriculture and communal park space. The 10-hectare Bürgerpark Grüne Mitte consists partly of commercially used areas for growing fruit and vegetables and partly of contemporary sports, play and recreation areas. This multi-coded park landscape is a pilot project for a democratic, integrative and future-oriented planning practice.

Multi-coded spaces are becoming increasingly important. Monofunctional attributions no longer correspond to the differentiated and sometimes contradictory demands of society. The Bürgerpark internalizes this and thus becomes a diverse, integrative social space. The permanent negotiation of conflicts of interest is desired and is intended to improve social coexistence not only in the park but throughout the city. At the same time, the overlapping of uses allows the open space to be secured in the long term and protects the area from future overdevelopment.

A clear, structural framework is central to a polyvalent open space that is used for a wide variety of purposes and themes. The coherent framework serves as a connecting and mediating element between the individual areas of use, creates orientation and enforces spatial relationships with the neighboring districts. At the same time, it acts as an important interface between the uses and the public path system in the park and promotes interaction.

In the concept designed and implemented by A24 Landschaft, existing structures were taken up and private areas that had previously been used for agriculture were integrated into a newly created park. The fact that not all of the land was available was an unusual starting point for a park design, but was not seen as an obstacle, but rather as an opportunity for participation and the creation of identity – an approach that also ensures long-term, partly privately organized park maintenance and thus conserves urban resources. Cooperation between civil society, planners and urban stakeholders already began during the implementation process. For example, there was a large-scale youth hearing, cross-sectional workshops and an initiative to create furniture for the park, which was actively worked on. Urban open space has been created around a citizens’ forum that caters to the diverse needs of a diverse population. People of all ages can meet here, whether for sport, gardening or simply to relax. The park is based on a uniform furnishing concept that combines the different uses into a coherent whole.

The areas that are still used for agriculture today, with their fruit trees and vegetable patches, as well as a renaturalized stream, create a rural flair.

The Bürgerpark Grüne Mitte Weinstadt is an innovative project with an atmosphere that combines urban and rural qualities and can thus contribute to well-being and quality of life. The successfully implemented concept meets the interests of the various stakeholders and provides a reliable framework for flexible content that can be adapted to future ideas.

Photos: Hanns Joosten, Christoph Püschner, Jochen Beglau

Architecture offices involved in the design:
von K Landschaftsarchitektur (construction management)
FRÖLICHSCHREIBER Architekten(citizen forum LP 4 – 5)
altelier_wolfshof_architekten (citizen forumLP 6 – 8)
Ingenieurbüro Gerald Wondratschek (citizen forum structural design)

Location: Bürgerpark Grüne Mitte Weinstadt, Stuttgarter Straße, 71384 Weinstadt (Germany)

Design year: 2016

Year Completed: 2023

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