Bern: 26 planning teams for major Viererfeld project
The large-scale Viererfeld/Mittelfeld urban development project is taking a step forward. The prequalification for the urban planning competition has been completed and the jury has now selected 26 planning teams from 57 applications.
The 26 teams - including three up-and-coming teams - are to develop their design proposals by October 2018 for a dense and mixed urban neighborhood that will provide living space for 3,000 people. The selected design teams include well-known names such as Christ & Gantenbein, pool Architekten and KCAP, and the jury has also included one up-and-coming team each from Bern, Basel and Zurich in the competition.
According to Bern's municipal council, work on Viererfeld/Mittelfeld - one of the largest and most complex urban development projects in Bern for decades - is set to move ahead quickly. The results of the competition should be available by the end of 2018, provided any legal action does not lead to delays. In the first phase, the competition procedure will take place for the urban development concept as well as the project part "district park". At the same time, the teams are expected to submit building concepts on a scale of 1:200 for a self-selected "residential" project section.
The municipal council hopes that this procedure will enable the teams to plan in greater depth than is usual in a pure urban planning competition and that they will already develop ideas for implementation. In addition to the contract for the master plan and the design of the public space, it would also enable further contracts to be awarded to four to seven planning teams for concrete project planning. With the planned first stage, around one third of the Viererfeld/Mittelfeld area is to be built over. The development of the master plan will be followed, among other things, by the competition procedures for the building sites and project parts of the further stages.
