Of Silent Giants and Still Waters

Berlin’s mass housing estates are characterized by their expansive and lush landscapes. However, they have been primarily revisited by recent architectural historiography, focusing on their architectonic and sociopolitical significance. This dissertation addresses the gap between architectural and landscape research by developing a land(scape)-oriented methodology for the housing estates. Through two case studies in former East and West Berlin, Marzahn and Märkisches Viertel, it explores new avenues within the political ecologies of land. The research examines the dynamic interplay between the neighborhoods and land transformations across different scales and time periods. It proposes hypotheses on the deep-time agency of land in shaping these projects (13,700 BCE-), institutional control in both cities (1946-1990), and land as a medium for resistance (1980-2025). By developing sets of research methods to study the relational production of landscapes according to the time periods, this research aims to illuminate the past and future roles of these estates in addressing Berlin’s territorial and socio-cultural challenges.

Robin Hueppe