Productive urban landscape becomes part of new urban quarter in Heidelberg, Germany

Last week, Heidelberg City Council approved the Dynamic Master Plan for the implementation of a new mixed-use urban quarter on the site of former Patrick Henry Village (PHV). To create a Produktive Stadtlandschaft is one of the development’s five key concepts, introduced to it by Katrin Bohn during the IBA-led ideas finding phase in 2016-7.

PHVision is a project of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Heidelberg and aims, in the IBA’s own words, to ‘create an exemplary urban design to demonstrate that the »knowledge city of tomorrow« will be fit to provide the resources of life for years to come’.

IBA says: ‘”More vital, more heterogeneous and greener” is the overall guiding principle of the new resilient district, which will provide answers to pressing future questions on the 100-hectare conversion area with contemporary living and working environments, innovative open space and mobility concepts, a climate-neutral energy supply and the intelligent use of digital technologies. By the time of the IBA’s final presentation in 2022, the first pioneers should have moved into PHV’.

The quarter’s productive urban landscape is described as: ‘Open spaces and resource cycles in the future PHV are rethought in terms of a productive urban landscape. This means that near-natural open spaces will not only serve for nature conservation, play and leisure uses but also and in particular for the production of food and energy as well as for water management. The focus is on the direct relationship of people to natural processes and material cycles’.

For more information on the project PHVision see the project’s own website.

For information on the IBA Heidelberg see here.

For information on our role in the design of PHVision see here.

Image: Produktive Stadtlandschaft is one of the five core concepts of the masterplan for Patrick-Henry-Village. (source: IBA Heidelberg and KCAP 2020)