Photo Credit: Jochen Juergensen
Did you know that Berlin is experiencing a housing crisis? You might have heard. According to figures from the Department for Urban Development, Building and Housing, there’s a demand for 100,000 more apartments than are currently on the market. 3.9 million people are officially registered in the city, a number expected to grow to over 4 million by 2040. To overcome the crisis, the city should be making 20,000 new apartments available each year. Of course, it is not.
A number of development plans do plan to tackle this issue, but one in particular is making headlines. This project, envisioned by architects Hans Kollhoff and Tobias Nöfer, along with entrepreneur Hamid Djadda, would entail 21,400 new apartments, providing space for up to 50,000 people. Sounds promising, right? The downside (to put it mildly) is that the housing would be built around the edge of Berlin’s beloved former airstrip turned public park, Tempelhofer Feld. The proposal, Zuhause am Tempelhofer Feld (Home at Tempelhofer Feld), would shrink the Feld’s size by a third, bringing it from roughly 300 hectares down to 200. Everything outside the ovular taxiway would be bulldozed, including Grillplätze, community gardens and important social spaces. The message is clear: building for Berlin’s future comes at a cost.
Bulldozing the Feld For a Kiez Of the Future
The proposed plan for ‘Home at Tempelhofer Feld’, image credit: Kollhoff / Nöfer / Astigmatic
It’s not the first time someone has proposed turning Tempelhofer Feld into apartments. Ever since its establishment as a public park in 2010, developers have wanted to revoke its status, since it stops them from building on it. Their proposed projects have ranged from small intrusions into its fringe’s greenery to large-scale construction in its centre. These proposals often appear before elections, presenting a solution to a huge voter concern: the housing crisis. So is the Home at Tempelhofer Feld plan just more election baiting? Is it any different to, for example, last year’s idea to build a dozen skyscrapers next to the former terminal building?
Well, for one, the Home at Tempelhofer Feld plan does actually envision the type of neighbourhood Berliners like: mixed-use, plenty of greenery, built in a style reminiscent of the Gründerzeit era and modelled after neighbouring Schillerkiez and Bergmannkiez. 30% of the new apartments would be reserved for social housing, which is desperately needed in Berlin (only a fraction of households eligible for a housing entitlement certificate, WBS, currently live in subsidised apartments). The new neighbourhood would be well connected to public transport, as a new S-Bahn station could be built on the existing Ringbahn tracks between Hermannstraße and Tempelhof stations.
As architects Kollhoff and Nöfer write on the project’s website, Home at Tempelhofer Feld is “a grand plan that evokes the qualities of familiar Berlin neighbourhoods and develops them naturally”. It’s practically a model greenfield Kiez of the kind Berliners drool over. There’s only one problem with it: location, location, location.
Barbecues Before Housing
Visualisation of housing next to the Feld included in ‘Home at Tempelhofer Feld’ proposal, image credit: Kollhoff / Nöfer / Astigmatic
Zone-A apartments in one of the hippest parts of town, a stone’s throw from the site of the historic Berlin Airlift, would sell like hot cakes. The irony is that the development would undermine the very essence of what makes the area so beloved. Tempelhofer Feld is so much more than an empty swath of land. Tempelhof Airport ceased flight operations on October 30, 2008 and since 2010, the former airfield has acted as a massive public park. In the summer, Berliners flock there to windsurf, kitesurf or longboard along its runways, watch sheep grazing or dogs in the dog park, birdwatch, visit a beer garden, play mini-golf, garden, get a coffee, take a tour, watch flamenco, see a Rosinenbomber or Nord 262 passenger plane, fly a kite, play tennis, badminton, football, baseball, basketball or beach volleyball, BBQ, picnic, watch a sunset and walk, run or bike around its 6.5km perimeter – to name a few activities.
Photo Credit: Jochen Juergensen
The Berlin ePrix and TFELD music festival take place there, made possible precisely because there are no Nachbarn nearby to file noise complaints. Plenty of impromptu cultural events happen too: performances, meet-ups, protests. As the site of the Berlin Airlift, it has great historical significance. You can freely walk along the runways where Allied planes used to land, stopping by multiple memorials and information boards to read up on the historic events that took place exactly where you’re standing. Acting as a ‘green lung’, the Feld’s trees and greenery positively impact the local climate by cooling the air and replenishing groundwater. It also helps the area’s biodiversity by providing a haven for endangered bird species like the skylark, as well as for wild bees, kestrels and reptiles, not to mention numerous types of flora.
Some might say that plants, birds and barbecues are no more important than people having a place to live. True, but that’s beside the point. Tempelhofer Feld is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a site that’s unique on a global scale, a symbol of Berlin’s past and present that encapsulates the city’s spirit like few other places. It’s an open-air museum that’s also a sports field that’s also an ecological reserve. You can stand on runways where C-47s used to land every 90 seconds, breathing in history with a beer in your hand. Of course Berliners love it. And that’s not to mention its symbolism as a place of public democracy.
Democracy at Stake
Current aerial view of Tempelhofer Feld, image credit: Kollhoff / Nöfer / Astigmatic
In 2014, Berliners were given the official opportunity to keep Tempelhofer Feld as a public park. The referendum aimed to have it “permanently preserved as a publicly used, accessible open space and remain the property of Berlin”, preventing any future construction on the site. 64.3% of voters decided to keep it a public park in what was a legally binding ballot, as well as the only law in Berlin that was ever passed by popular vote. You’d think that would settle the matter. So who are those second-guessing the voice of democracy?
In this year’s opinion poll commissioned by the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) and conducted by the Institute for New Social Answers (INSA), 59% of respondents spoke out in favour of the planned development of the Feld. That’s quite the change of public attitude over the span of a decade. But whether it’s a response to the housing crisis or something else, the answer is not yet clear.
An official referendum and an opinion poll are not equal.
What we do know is that INSA, the organisation that conducted the poll, has documented ties to the AfD and CDU. Its chairman, former CDU member Hermann Binkert, has historically financially supported the AfD and spoken out in its favour. According to Der Spiegel editor Severin Weiland, Binkert wrote “several positive-sounding articles about the AfD” for The Huffington Post.
Naturally, this raises questions about the biased nature of the recent poll. Red flags are flying about its potential political motives, considering that the AfD and CDU are the most pro-developer parties of those expected to secure seats in the Berlin Senate following the elections on September 20. Even if it wasn’t biased, its phrasing wasn’t exactly impartial.
Questionable Questions
The proposed plan for ‘Home at Tempelhofer Feld’, image credit: Kollhoff / Nöfer / Astigmatic
“An official referendum and an opinion poll are not equal,” stresses Anita Möller from 100% Tempelhofer Feld (THF100), the main organisation fighting to preserve the Feld in its entirety. The 2014 referendum came about from the hard work of THF100. They directly engaged with thousands of Berliners to educate them about what developing the former airport could mean. The 2026 poll conducted by INSA was more simplistic and, it could be argued, guided respondents towards the ‘correct’ answer. Specifically, these were the questions asked:
1. How do you assess the current situation of Berlin’s housing market? (81% of respondents chose ‘strained’ or ‘very strained’, more so for renters).
2. Would you support or oppose Berlin using additional inner-city land for housing construction? (More housing construction garnered the support of 60% of respondents).
3. What is your view on limited development along the edge of Tempelhofer Feld to create additional housing while preserving the central open space? (59% of respondents said they support it).
Image of what full development of Tempelhofer Feld would look like, image credit: Kollhoff / Nöfer / Astigmatic
The questions frame a clear logical train of thought from ‘the housing market is a mess’ to ‘we need more housing’ to ‘here’s a solution’. By the final question, backing out of supporting a “limited development” plan would seem like backtracking. Building on Tempelhofer Feld simply appears as a rational solution to the dire state of Berlin’s housing crisis.
It’s misleading, not least because the “limited development along the edge of Tempelhofer Feld […] while preserving the central open space” makes the impact sound minimal. In reality, almost all of the Feld’s recreational facilities – a community garden, dog park, basketball court and two of the three designated barbecue areas – are located outside the ovular taxiway, on the planned development site. The centre of the Feld is mostly cordoned off for the protection of biodiversity. Should Tempelhofer Feld’s edges be bulldozed, the space would either lose the majority of its social facilities or they would be moved closer to its centre, thus compromising the park’s ecological role. Either way, the impact would be far from “limited”.
Alternative Solutions
Photo Credit: Jochen Juergensen
Yes, denying people a place to live in the name of preserving a nice rollerskating spot or some random plant species would be a sign of hopelessly detached privilege, but it’s not an either/or choice that has to be made. Despite what populist politicians would like you to believe, rare birds, rollerskaters and barbecuers aren’t the reason you can’t get a flat. That falls under the responsibility of developers. Imagine the answers an opinion poll might have yielded from the questions, ‘Are you aware that Berlin has two million square meters of empty office space?’ and ‘Would you support or oppose converting this empty office space into roughly 30,000 apartments?’ Converting empty office space into housing is entirely feasible, but if an opinion poll asked that, it would suddenly sound as if bulldozing Tempelhofer Feld in the name of solving the housing shortage wasn’t a necessity, but a choice.
A leaked government report acquired by Berliner Zeitung in 2024 reveals that Berlin has space for 249,000 new apartments. These could be built on top of countless single-storey supermarkets or on areas of unused land like the disused rail yard in Pankow or the former Tegel Airport. In fact, a plan already exists to do just that. The Urban Development Plan for Housing 2040, passed by the Berlin Senate in September 2024, outlines where 220,000 apartments could be built within the next decade and a half.
What we’re actually dealing with in Berlin is not a housing crisis but a rent crisis.
The problem is that construction takes time, and Berliners were in dire need of apartments yesterday. The developers behind Home at Tempelhofer Feld believe that construction could start as early as two years from now and be finished in six. In Berlin, where it took a decade and a half to get the S-Bahn running one stop between Wedding and Hauptbahnhof and the construction of BER airport took almost three times longer than envisioned, six years to build an entire greenfield city district sounds like a daydream. And if it really is possible, then it should also be possible in places other than a much-loved public park.
There are faster and easier solutions. Take the problem of furnished apartments – a legal loophole exploited by landlords that allows them to charge exorbitant prices for short-term rentals. Converting thousands of these apartments into regular rental properties could be done almost immediately, if only such political will existed. Similarly, many people live in apartments that are simply too big for them, but they can’t move because a new contract on a smaller flat would be more expensive than what they pay now. Regulating rental prices could eliminate this illogical fiasco and better distribute living space in the city.
As Josh Peterson of the group Architects4THF aptly points out, “What we’re actually dealing with in Berlin is not a housing crisis but a rent crisis.” With solutions aplenty, it’s the political will to implement them that’s missing. While these solutions would help everyday Berliners, they would be detrimental to the interests of landlords and developers. For this reason, the development of Tempelhofer Feld is essentially the CDU’s only proposal, as it actively serves the interests of those who will vote for them. It’s the only solution they have to tackle the rent crisis, and the only one they want to have.
A Field of Dreams
Photo Credit: Jochen Juergensen
To propose building on Tempelhofer Feld this close to an election is inconsiderate at best and calculating, profit-driven cronyism at worst. We’re in the midst of a political game. The winners are politicians and developers, while the losers aren’t just birds and barbecuers but Berlin’s unique cultural heritage. As the city continues to grow, the value of unique spaces amidst urban sprawl will also grow. That’s why Berliners voted to preserve it back in 2014. “Yes, there was a referendum. But the world has changed since then,” commented Sebastian Stietzel, president of the IHK. Indeed, the world has changed and is changing. But that doesn’t mean Berliners have to idly sit back and watch as the places we love are destroyed.
Keep up with 100% Tempelhofer Feld at thf100.de.