Sonnenallee Garden Archipelago in Berlin

Local residents and tradespeople of Sonnenallee (one of Berlin’s major traffic arteries) worked together with the teams of place-making and Atelier Fanelsa on tactical revitalization of the avenue tree pits. Together they discovered the possibilities of altering their everyday life environment with minimal intervention.

The interventions included cleaning and repairing the existing street furniture, putting up easily reproducible wooden fences around the tree pits, planting herbs and applying traditional stone gardening techniques. A garden-crate was built using the carriage of a pushcart to make a gathering spot for participants and a conversation starter for passer-bys.

During the construction, gardening methods were used as much for function as a way to be artistic and poetic, creating space for consciousness and recognition of the unused margin in the familiar space of a busy traffic artery.