Architecture_Gallery
TEMPELHOF MESSE: International Trade Fair in the Heart of Germania

Graduation Project @ David Azrieli School of Architecture, Tel-Aviv University

Advisor: Prof. Danny Lazar
Tempelhof-Messe
Location: Berlin, Germany
Year: 2010
Project Area: 130,000 ㎡
Design Team: Orly Even

The former Tempelhof Airport, extending over approximately 3,800 dunams in the center of Berlin, is sort of a “last dinosaur”, one of the few remaining testaments to Hitler's plan of rebuilding the city center during the Nazi regime. As such, the controversial decision to shut it down in 2008 has opened an urban void in the midst of the city, as well as an historic one - a space of memory/non-memory. Tempelhof’s closing provided an opportunity to both confront its past and formulate spacial tools for its conservation and re-use.

The project deals with the unavoidable interaction between past and present, and with the moral and architectural dissonance between the seemingly permanent monumentality of the existing building, and the constant change of the city. Taking a Koolhaas approach of the triumph of urbanism over architecture, the programme chosen does not intend to commemorate the history of the place (Fascist architecture performs this role well on its own), but rather represent a dynamic temporal reality.

Tempelhof Messe, an international trade fair planned alongside and inside the airport complex, is a contemporary interpretation to the Nazi idea of Tempelhof as the gateway to Berlin. Facing the city, the existing structure maintains its complete exterior, with all of its historic and cultural significance. It functions as the entrance to the trade fair, over the “moat” and through the “city walls”, in both physical and metaphorical sense. Beyond the wall, a new city is revealed, planned according to two combined grids – a radial grid applied by the existing building, and a new orthogonal grid. The building’s bigness is resolved by confronting it with architecture just as big, and the heart of the project is at the meeting point of the old and the new, under the auspices of the roof formerly used for aircraft parking.

Tempelhof Airport, Aerial View
Tempelhof Airport, Aerial View: Google

Templehof Airport, Aerial View from NW, circa 1948:

USAF/Public domain

Zentralflughafen Tempelhof
Zentralflughafen Tempelhof - Passangers Terminal Entrance Square
“City Walls”
“City Walls” - exterior facade of the 1.3-kilometer-long building
Rooftop and taxiway
Rooftop and taxiway. The roof originally designed as a tribune, to hold 80,000 spectators during Nazi rallies

Photo: TSGT Jose Lopez Jr., US Air Force/

USAF/Public domain

Beneath the suspended roof
Beneath the suspended roof - hangars and boarding gates. Photo: PascalBeckmann/ Public domain
Overview of building units
Overview of building units [courtesy of Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development]
Tempelhof-Tel Aviv
Bigness, Tempelhof-Tel Aviv
Tempelhof-Lucca
A (non)City Within a City, Tempelhof-Lucca
Masterplan Scheme
Masterplan Scheme
Site Plan
Site Plan
Trade Fair Circulation
Trade Fair Circulation
Transportation
Transportation
“Moat” Level Plan
“Moat” Level Plan (0.00), Hanger#5
Upper Promenade Level Plan
Upper Promenade Level Plan (+10.90), Hanger#5
Sec A-A
Sec A-A
Sec B-B
Sec B-B
Sec C-C
Sec C-C
Tempelhof-Messe
New Urban Façade
New Urban Façade
“Moat” Level Plan
“Moat” Level Plan (0.00), Enlarged Segment
Upper Promenade Level Plan
Upper Promenade Level Plan (+10.90), Enlarged Segment
Main Boulevard
Main Boulevard, Entrance Pavilion View
Sec A-A, Enlarged
Sec A-A, Enlarged Segment
Main Boulevard
Main Boulevard, View Towards Lecture Halls, Information Posts and Bridge
Sec B-B, Enlarged
Sec B-B, Enlarged Segment
Roof Garden
Roof Garden and Entrance to Hangar Gallery Level
Sec C-C, Enlarged
Sec C-C, Enlarged Segment
Tempelhof-Messe model
Tempelhof-Messe model