Identifiable spaces and structures often characterize cities and urban areas. It is less often that urban spaces are known for what they lack; what is present often overshadows what is absent. When we think about cityscapes, we often focus on what’s built rather than what’s not. The term urban void, is a broadly inclusive category for unused, underused, abandoned, or misused urban space.¹ Tangential terms have emerged to encompass specific types of spaces otherwise classified simply as urban voids. For example, “temporarily obsolete, abandoned, derelict sites”, are known as TOADS, while “brownfields” denote a site specifically for its industrial or commercial use.² These patches of unused space, often sandwiched between visibly used or developed space in cities and urban environments become “voids”. 

But the use of the term void is neither a neutral designation nor categorization of convenience.

“The classification of space as void is inevitably bound up with economic, social and political agendas”.³ Because these spaces occur within urban environments, which are constantly influenced by social, economic, political, and cultural circumstances, they “inevitably reflect the spirit of an age and place”.⁴

“Voids never exist beyond our comprehension, or indeed apart from our ideas of the city and how it might be transformed.”⁵

With multiple possibilities for comprehension, so exists a multitude of possibilities of form for urban voids. Competing claims for use often includes development of housing, commercial spaces, creative spaces, sustainability efforts (such as urban gardening, renewable energy installations, green roofing, water collection systems, etc.) and more. 

Certain frameworks propose multiple lenses with which to approach voids in Berlin. These include often overlapping but distinct interests for unused urban spaces. These disparate visions and competing interests become more salient as groups begin making their imagined futures reality. 

These “lenses”include the fantastical or imaginative future of a city, conceptualizing voids as spaces capable of aestheticization or particularly unique use. The “artistic lens”, creates a narrative of the city that may exclude social needs in favor of aestheticization.^{6 7} In contrast, a heritage conservation lens champions the protection of tangible materials in future use of spaces. Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin is a prime example of the heritage approach to urban voids, as the space itself lacks many material artifacts that could be preserved, rather hosts memories and histories in the place itself. The dilemma of “emptiness as heritage” leaves potential developers, planners, or conservationists with questions about what may be preserved in emptiness, or what may be built in it instead.⁸

More traditionally, real estate approaches—which respond to market pressures and profit expectations—see voids in their potential for development and pecuniary results. 

In an architectural and planning context, supports an inherent tendency to “create space anew,” with buildings.⁹ When architects and planners carry out others’ visions through the creation of buildings, other visions for the space (even unrealistic ones) are lost. Planning is not only the site of conflict between public and private interest, but also the site of origin for long term impacts of planning: gentrification, displacement, homogenisation, and speculation. 

Lastly, approaching voids through a civic initiative lens views these spaces as vital for “social experimentation”.¹⁰ In the case of Berlin, this has contributed heavily to the development of its alternative culture. Because voids function differently from conventional public spaces, activities that involve more diverse groups of people often take place on them.¹¹ When considering voids in this way, their space is often seen as something inclusive, collective, experimental, supportive of communing, and free from constraints.¹²

How Are Voids Created?

Most small scale voids occur unintentionally when not incorporated into development processes due to their shape.¹³ In the case of brownfields, it’s the demolition or abandonment of industrial and commercial sites that gives rise to these voids. In most cases the emergence of voids can be attributed to “deindustrialisation, ecological disaster, war, real estate miscalculations or strategies of disinvestment”.¹⁴

In Germany, urban voids exist frequently in the former German Democratic Republic’s deindustrialized cities, but also in parts of post-conflict Western Germany. Post-war destruction in Berlin combined with a lack of development pressure during the Cold War resulted in an “archipelago” of voids.¹⁵ The uneven development of the city throughout its divided and reunified stages further reinforced a spattering of these voided spaces. Additionally, division of the city during the Cold War and further insulation from the political and economic factors that facilitated urbanization and development across Europe during the time helped to both create voids and prolong their existence.¹⁶ 

How Are Voids Understood in a German Context?

Urban voids carry characteristics of the city around them and the dynamics of their surroundings. In Germany, this is reflected in the German term Brachen, which translates to fallow land or waiting lands, historically a term used in agricultural contexts.¹⁷ Now used more commonly in architectural and planning spaces, this term recognizes the notion of a space as suspended, with the absence acting as the source of potential, alternative to the connotations of emptiness and worthlessness conjured by the term void.¹⁸ This particular cultural and linguistic interpretation of voids is valuable to understanding voids in a German context, and is seen repeatedly in various instances of voids in Berlin.  

The agricultural connotations of the term Brachen is particularly salient when applied to urban, post-war contexts. Rather than untilled soils left untouched for the impending placement of crop, Stadtbrachen (Stadt meaning city), refers to the spaces left untouched post war; resulting from massive destruction, hindered by the financial impossibility of rebuilding. The post war landscape, in German the Trümmerlandscahft (landscape of rubble), was an important concept in Germany post-war. The landscape of rubble made significant and symbolic appearances in films and media across Germany, even in Hollywood.Taking the undeniable realities of the landscape at the time and intertwining them with the conception of cities like Berlin, the Trümmerfilm movement made absence its inspiration. Today, the creation of voids through neglect are sites of possibility for a variety of traditional urban designers, developers, artists and interested civic parties. 

On Tempelhof Field, one instance of the legacy of the site’s industrial past can be found in its soils. The referendum that protected the field did not remediate or restore the brownfield, but protected its current status on ecological grounds. Aircraft maintenance, fuel storage, de-icing procedures, and the field’s past industrial use all present possibilities for contaminated soils. Because of the potential contamination, users of the field, such as Allmende Kontor, are not permitted to dig into the ground. Instead, they use raised beds to avoid the possible contamination in the soil around them.  

1. S. W. Hwang and S. J. Lee, “Unused, underused, and misused: an examination of theories on urban void spaces,” Urban Research & Practice 13, no. 5 (2020): 540, https://doi-org.ezproxy.uvm.edu/10.1080/17535069.2019.1634140. ↩︎
2. Ibid., 543. ↩︎
3. Ross Beveridge, Markus Kip, and Heike Oevermann, “From Wastelands to Waiting Lands: Retrieving Possibility from the Voids of Berlin,” City 26, no. 2/3 (2022): 285, doi:10.1080/13604813.2022.2040200, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uvm.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url&db=aph&AN=156916518&site=ehost-live&scope=site. ↩︎
4. S. W. Hwang and S. J. Lee, “Unused, underused, and misused: an examination of theories on urban void spaces,” Urban Research & Practice 13, no. 5 (2020): 541, https://doi-org.ezproxy.uvm.edu/10.1080/17535069.2019.1634140. ↩︎
5. Ross Beveridge, Markus Kip, and Heike Oevermann, “From Wastelands to Waiting Lands: Retrieving Possibility from the Voids of Berlin,” City 26, no. 2/3 (2022): 286, doi:10.1080/13604813.2022.2040200, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uvm.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url&db=aph&AN=156916518&site=ehost-live&scope=site. ↩︎
6. Ross Beveridge, Markus Kip, and Heike Oevermann, “From Wastelands to Waiting Lands: Retrieving Possibility from the Voids of Berlin,” City 26, no. 2/3 (2022): 281-303, doi:10.1080/13604813.2022.2040200, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uvm.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url&db=aph&AN=156916518&site=ehost-live&scope=site. ↩︎
7. Ibid., 286. ↩︎
8. Ibid., 291 ↩︎
9. Ibid., 293 ↩︎
10. Ibid., 295 ↩︎
11. S. W. Hwang and S. J. Lee, “Unused, underused, and misused: an examination of theories on urban void spaces,” Urban Research & Practice 13, no. 5 (2020): 547, https://doi-org.ezproxy.uvm.edu/10.1080/17535069.2019.1634140. ↩︎
12. Ross Beveridge, Markus Kip, and Heike Oevermann, “From Wastelands to Waiting Lands: Retrieving Possibility from the Voids of Berlin,” City 26, no. 2/3 (2022): 295, doi:10.1080/13604813.2022.2040200, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uvm.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url&db=aph&AN=156916518&site=ehost-live&scope=site. ↩︎
13. S. W. Hwang and S. J. Lee, “Unused, underused, and misused: an examination of theories on urban void spaces,” Urban Research & Practice 13, no. 5 (2020): 545, https://doi-org.ezproxy.uvm.edu/10.1080/17535069.2019.1634140. ↩︎
14. Ross Beveridge, Markus Kip, and Heike Oevermann, “From Wastelands to Waiting Lands: Retrieving Possibility from the Voids of Berlin,” City 26, no. 2/3 (2022): 284, doi:10.1080/13604813.2022.2040200, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uvm.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url&db=aph&AN=156916518&site=ehost-live&scope=site. ↩︎
15. Ibid., 289 ↩︎
16. Ibid., 289 ↩︎
17. Ibid., 283 ↩︎
18. Ibid., 285 ↩︎