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MAKING DARKNESS: BERLIN TIERGARTEN AND THE WEST-BERLIN BIOTOPE MAP
SANDRA BARTOLI

IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL OBRIST
16.06.2026, 18:00 – HS7, Schütte-Lihotzky

Michael Obrist [feld72] in conversation with Sandra Bartoli about "Making Darkness: Berlin Tiergarten and the West-Berlin Biotope Map"

When does a human-constructed place go beyond the human, and how necessary is this transgression? To look at the built environment from the perspective of natural history allows one to explore the city as a system and construct of the natural and human together; furthermore, it introduces the notion of the city (of tomorrow) as a producer of resources and not as the machine of consumption we are used to assuming. Tiergarten, 210 hectares of forest in the middle of Berlin and the oldest park in the city, is an example of a place where many aspects of ecology, urbanism, heritage, daily culture, and politics are simultaneously present and evidently interfering with each other — to the point of bothering each other — in a way that transgresses established urban norms both spatial and societal. Over time, Tiergarten has become an island of anomalies that can be read as the radical expression of what is most urban and public in the city. Among many characteristics of Tiergarten is that here human history and natural history are constructed together to shape a model for future environments in an ever-expanding sea of urbanisation. This talk ranges from Tiergarten’s transgression as a key to shift established ways of talking about what is considered urban to elements of the biotope map of West Berlin, a far-sighted document of 1984 proposing to understand the city as a system of ecological processes that makes of wilderness a sanctioned agent of the urban environment, ultimately dissolving the alleged antagonism between city and nature.

Sandra Bartoli
Sandra Bartoli is a landscape architect and architect, co-founder of the Büros für Konstruktivismus in Berlin with Silvan Linden. She co-publishes the series AG Architektur in Gebrauch (Architecture in use), an architectural zine started by the office in 2014, in which “use” is explored as an aesthetic category that informs the development and transformation of architectural space. Her research focuses on sites of the entanglement of nature and city, such as Tiergarten in Berlin, a transgressive example of place, which leads to new definitions and models of what is “urban” under the challenge of the Anthropocene. In 2019, Bartoli co-edited the book Tiergarten: Landscape of Transgression (Park Books) with Jörg Stollmann. Bartoli was co-curator with Silvan Linden and Florian Wüst of the exhibition project Licht Luft Scheisse. Perspectives on Ecology and Modernity with the shows Archaeologies of Sustainability and Über Natur in Berlin at the Botanical Garden Museum and the nGbK. She is co-editor of the respective books, published in 2020 with adocs Hamburg. From 2017 to 2018, Bartoli began work on the research theme “The City’s Future Natural History” as an Endowed Professor for Visionary Forms of Cities at the Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is currently leading the research project “Wilde Dächer: die Ökosystemleistung extensiver Dachbegrünungen” financed by Zukunft Bau (BBSR). Bartoli is a full professor at the Architecture Faculty of Munich University of Applied Sciences.

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