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The small and charming Swiss capital, Berne, is at the focus of the Schindler Award 2012.
The small and charming Swiss capital, Berne, is at the focus of the Schindler Award 2012. With a population of just 131,000, Berne has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983 and ranks among the world’s top ten cities for best quality of life. The old town boasts one of Europe's longest covered shopping promenades with more than six kilometers of arcades and buildings dating back to the early 15th century.
The small and charming Swiss capital, Berne, is at the focus of the Schindler Award 2012.
With a population of just 131,000, Berne has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983 and ranks among the world’s top ten cities for best quality of life. The old town boasts one of Europe's longest covered shopping promenades with more than six kilometers of arcades and buildings dating back to the early 15th century.
The site chosen for the Schindler Award 2012 stands in stark contrast to the rest of the old town, with its excellently preserved medieval buildings. Lying at the northwest corner, just two-minutes walk from the Central Train Station, the site has its treasures - notably the Museum of Fine Arts and the nearby Aare River – but these must share the space with an unsightly parking area and an imposing railway bridge. On one side of the main thoroughfare is a tangle of streets, one of which is home to the city's drug dispensary for heroin addicts; on the other is the "Reitschule" Cultural Center, which stages rock concerts, cinema and agitprop (political) theater.
Vision for a revived cultural quarter in Berne
The core themes of the task are urban repair, density, public space and integration.
The students will have to make better use of the public space and integrate urban repair ideas into their planning while also incorporating the various cultural and fringe groups that have settled in the area. The idea is to propose a new master plan in order to raise utilization and density in the perimeter without excluding any of the existing social institutions, and to improve overall quality and accessibility of the public area.
Six specific subtasks have been defined to reinvigorate the site:
- Propose a new master plan to raise utilization and density in the perimeter
- Strengthen the urban link among the area's three cultural institutions
- Propose an adequate urban answer to define both the north-west corner of the old town as well as the southern bridgehead of the Lorraine Bridge
- Integrate the existing Drogenanlaufstelle (drug dispensary for heroin addicts)
- Improve the overall quality and accessibility of the public space
- Link the public space in and around the Schützenmatt area with the footwalks on the borders of the Aare river.
Further details will follow in September 2011 when the registration opens.
