Gera: Freiraum Mitte

The theme of green space is reinterpreted and emphasised: a green ‘periphery’ along the historic city center of Gera is created.
The new Culture Square and the square around the historical town museum will be considered as a unique large square, located between two green areas (in the north and in the south). In order to make the old city limits even more clearly visible, the new Kulturplatz will also be designed in green water-permeable asphalt with two different shades of green and highlighted with a modern pattern in the ground. The ‘green carpet’ places all the buildings with their different architectural styles on one level without prioritising any one building. The Kulturplatz thus forms a new hub in terms of art, culture, events, history, education, digitalisation and modernity. The new Geraer Mitte meets here at this hub.
A new green steel construction in the area of the new house at KuK defines temporarely the edge of the square. It’s a new meeting place for young and old, where food trucks could temporarily gather and during summer, an open-air cinema with deck chairs is to be found.
The outdoor space thus becomes a new home away from home. The space for living and working, meeting and learning places is not only bound to the interior of a building. The future networks the interior and exterior space, thus creating a new qualitative in-between space, a laboratory for a new dynamic society.
The design concept of the colour green plays an essential role in this. Nothing is as it normally appears to the observer. Everything is green – from the asphalt to the street forniture. The result is a place for reflection and inspiration, a place of ‘deception and reinterpretation’.
Thus Geras Neue Mitte is a dynamic experimental and future-oriented place, a meeting point for everyone, a groundbreaking model for the state of Thuringia.

with Man Made Land and Dipl. Ing. Maria Gehrmann
3D Visualisation MAU