Atelier LOIDL

Atelier LOIDL has been practicing an open and discursive design process since its establishment in 1984. Based in Germany‘s capital Berlin Atelier LOIDL grew to a company of about 23 employees. Since 2005 Atelier LOIDL is managed by Bernd Joosten, Leonard Grosch and Felix Schwarz. We provide all services associated with landscape architecture, master and urban planning including cost and quantity observation. For special and most individual solutions we cooperate with a variety of experts in the fields of ecology, entertainment, irrigation, lighting design and others.

Our conviction is that a design should be the best possible solution developed by a team collaborating intensively rather than a projection surface for an individual’s ideas. The products of our efforts are therefore not repetitive designs that refer back to the person creating them, but are instead the results of a search for custom-made and self-evident concepts that respond to people’s wishes and needs at a particular location. A conceptual as well as a detailed consideration of our designs reveals their qualities of individuality and distinctiveness. These arise from our understanding of the city as texture, of the location of the site as both a given and an opportunity, and of design as being the precise formulation of circumstances and needs while using a reduced design medium. These serve as indispensable guiding principles in our work.

The City as Texture
Our work always involves a debate about and a discussion of urbanism. The city is the starting point of our planning efforts and in the majority of cases is also where these ideas are put into practice. Our approach to urban design and landscape architecture is inextricably connected to a certain guiding principle of urban planning: The city as texture. This texture is the result of the separation of landscape and development, which in turn results in concentration and spatial density. This density brings about complexity and variety. We prefer a city in which architecture not only surrounds interior space, but also serves as the inner wall of exterior space. Texture thus requires clearly defined spaces; spaces that have the ability to both promote identification and challenge sensuous intelligence. The city as texture; one that encourages us to deal with its components directly and to lean up against them, to make them one’s own.

We design simple and precise places. We are not concerned with superficial and superimposed effects that are already overwhelming us in today’s event culture. Usable places suitable for everyday use unfold their poetry from that very moment of eternity and simplicity. We trust in the quality of simple landscape architectural means of design and feel here suitability, sense and sensuality.

The Baakenpark, Hamburg

The Baakenpark is the green centre of the eastern HafenCity and of the quarter of Baakenhafen. The 1.6 hectare peninsula, artificially created with sand from the river Elbe, is located in the middle of the former harbour basin of Baakenhafen, which is characterized by linear edges, steel banks and stone promenades. With its wild shoreline, the green embankments right up to the water and its characteristic topography, the park forms an atmospheric counterpart to its surroundings. A park that invites visitors to explore and only unfolds when walking through it. A park with a variety of offers for all visitors, with lively meeting points, wide meadows and playgrounds, but also with quieter, isolated places.

Images by Mark Pflueger & Leonard Grosch

Park am Gleisdreieck, Berlin

From the Landwehr Canal near Potsdamer Platz extending to the Yorck Bridges in the South, the ten hectares spanning western part of the Park am Gleisdreieck was built until spring 2013. With this, the already finished Eastpark was supplemented and as of now offers Schöneberg’s local residents a rambling park landscape with sport, playground and relaxation facilities. Over forty years the area around the former railroad triangle “Gleisdreieck” had been inaccessible and subjected to changing plans and utilization demands.

Images by Julien Lanoo

Zu neuen Ufern, Siegen

Following the demolition of the ‘Siegplatte’ (a car park on the embankment of the river Sieg), the construction of a large-scale progression of steps along the river between 2012 and 2016 allowed for a new and direct access to the river in the city centre of Siegen. The naturalized Sieg, with its grassed islands and shore embankments, allows the biological passage of aquatic and amphibian fauna. The 180-metre-long staircase sculpture lies by the river and becomes a performance stage for the interaction between city and river. With a view of the close-to-nature Sieg, the Siegtreppen turn into meeting places. The river basin is transformed into a stepping stone between the upper and lower towns. The project won numerous awards and took the German Landscape Architecture Award 2017 in the category ‘Green infrastructure as strategy’.

Images by Leonard Grosch

University Campus Freie Universität Berlin

Following the design approach of post-war modernism, a wide, uninterrupted meadow becomes the centre of the landscape. It encompasses the university buildings and restores the original character of a self-contained campus. The completion of the tree population with light tree groves and the combination of linear tree structures form the expanse of the clearing. The well-defined arrangement of extensive meadows and spacious entrance areas creates a uniform shape along the streets. The composition of the spatial units creates new interactions between inside and outside, between ‘institute residents’ and pedestrians. The university campus in Berlin-Dahlem, approx. 12.3 acres in size, has been completed in several stages between 2009 and 2017.

Image by Leonard Grosch

The Lustgarten

The Lustgarten (meaning ‘pleasure garden’), measuring approx. 5,9 acres in size, is the central garden area of Berlin’s Museum Island. The contemporary interpretation of the original layout by C.F. Schinkel dating from 1829 was awarded the German Landscape Architecture Prize in 2001. In memoriam Prof. Hans Loidl † who was the founder of Atelier Loidl.