Kirchsteigfeld: A European Perspective on the Creation of Community [Portfolio]

Kathleen James-Chakraborty Kirchsteigfeld— A European Perspective on the Construction of Community American admirers of New Urbanism would almost certainly be delighted by a visit to Kirch- steigfeld. This new district of Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin, features various hallmarks of New Urbanist planning. Public spaces recreate earlier urban patterns; a well defined network of streets intertwines with ample greenswards; the housing is relatively dense. It was designed between 1991 and 1993 by the architectural firm of Rob Krier and Christoph Kohl, and individual buildings were executed by several architectural firms from Central Europe and the United States. Kirchsteigfeld’s planners and architects revived many traditional features of central European towns and cities, updating them to accommodate contemporary demands for greenery and parking. At Kirchsteigfeld’s core stands a church; one of the first built in eastern Germany since World War II, it was designed by Italian architect Augusto Romano Burelli. This instant landmark is ringed on three sides by public spaces lined with storefronts. Beyond those are residential districts and community facilities, such as schools. Most streets are lined with three- to five-story apartment buildings with colorful facades. Neigh- borhood-scale features include a horseshoe- shaped plaza that opens onto a rondelle. A canal bisects the community, its beautifully landscaped banks bordered with serpentine benches. Com- munal gardens are inside each block, providing further green spaces and access to parking tucked discreetly to the side. An excellent streetcar link to the center of Potsdam provides a convenient alternative, however, to the use of private cars. At Kirchsteigfeld, planning models developed to suture the gashes World War ii opened in Berlin’s urban fabric were applied to an undevel- oped site on the metropolitan periphery. This shift created both opportunities and challenges. The results illustrate the close relationship between even the most carefully considered design on the one hand and cultural and market forces on the other. They also tie the community to a series of often unacknowledged sources whose success Kirchsteigfeld is not always able to match. Roots in IBA Since the 1970s, Krier has called for reviving Europe’s nineteenth-century pattern of high-den- sity, low-rise apartment buildings built to the street edge, though he proposes to make it more habitable by creating through-block communal courtyards. His influence has been enormous in Europe, where the urban forms he seeks to revive are associated with the good life of an earlier time, just as small towns are in the United States. Most PLACES 14:1