Green City Tegel
Energy-Plus-City Tegel
Flying into Berlin you will never forget the City, but what will be branded on your mind is surely the hexagon of the terminal of its long lasting airport Tegel allowing to get extremely fast from one place to the other and serving as a perfect basis for most efficient logistics.
Originally the airport was planned to cope with 2.5 Mio. passengers per year. With its 14 Mio. passengers per year whom it absorbs these days TXL, as insiders call it, is still running strong. However, the execution of the death sentence has definitely been planned for October 2011, and the new airport BBI in Brandenburg will take over.
The question, however, is what will be the destiny of the old airport Tegel? A landscape covering 460 ha of land with existing buildings landing runaways, forests and meadows right in the center of the City is available for a new destiny.
The Hamburg based architect Prof. Meinhard von Gerkan who, 40 years ago, planned and built the Tegel airport, has been proposing to give life to a new City of the future at the Tegel site. The building of the central terminal should lodge a showroom giving the opportunity to German Environmentally oriented industry to present itself with the latest ideas for sustainable city planning. In the long run this place could become the central planning office for the creation of an Energy-Plus-City. The meaning of this expression is the implementation of a City concept in which the site based output of energy is beyond the needed energy input to run the City.
Alternative energy producing kits should be installed as roof based solar panels and wind energy stations combined with new energy storage systems and re-adaptation of the existing buildings to make Tegel a model to be followed. The old airport area should be made available for companies working in the alternative energy fields. These companies could be start-up companies, new companies or may be companies working on future oriented technologies. Also included could be a conference center while the existing spaces could be used for offices, workspaces and hangars for new jobs and activities. Alongside the two old landing runaways apartment houses shall be built following the latest energy concepts in housing. Originally there was a second hexagon planned in extension of the existing airport. It has never been implemented but the place should be used to install hexagonally arranged wind power stations.
The Tegel Airport reinvented could become a model for an ENERGY-PLUS-CITY. But we have to move fast. Otherwise we will see others do it. Abu Dhabi with its project MASDAR actually planned and supposed to be implemented is, literally speaking, “ante portas”.
The TAO Group would well fit into this environment and could take offices there. As lively technology contributions to the Green City could be suggested:
- Flight operations of the first officially accredited solar driven airship “Lotte” all in having the vehicle being exposed in a showroom of a museum for technologies.
- Workshop for high altitude platform and its regenerative solar energy propulsion systems to be used in disaster management and mobile telecommunication to suffice to the needs to be expected in high density areas worldwide. The system can do without having antenna masts in the cities with avoiding the disastrous results in radiance we have to cope with actually.
- The further development of new regenerative energy accumulating systems as the Redox-Flow-Battery.
Excursus: Masdar City
If plans come true Masdar City will be the first Ecological City worldwide. 50’000 people will live, work and do research work within an area of 6 square km. The greenest city worldwide will get all its energy from renewable resources, will have no pollution in CO2 and factually produce no garbage. The most outstanding land of oil production thinks to make big deals in Cleantech first and foremost in renewable energy matters. The goal is to convince innovative Cleantech companies from all over the world to settle down in Abu Dhabi Masdar City. The basic idea is most tempting, but it will be difficult for small and middle-sized companies to take the challenge. Things might be different for the TAO-Group as they have already been working for this area calculating the static implications within a big construction and alternative energy project.
We would be pleased to see you back to check...
