Future Cities Forum interview with Buro Happold on Patrick Henry Village, Heidelberg

Above: CGI from KCAP Architects of regeneration of the former US base Patrick Henry Village near Heidelberg

Future Cities Forum has been speaking with Thomas Kraubitz, Partner at Buro Happold, in Germany, about master-planning new model settlements from disused military bases.

As Partner and Head of Sustainability and Climate, Thomas co-leads Buro Happold’s Cities Europe team, with a strong focus on resilient urban environments in Germany, Europe and beyond. He is a passionate consultant and advisor to public and private clients with a deep understanding of the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration in driving best-practice solutions.

Thomas leads the region’s engagement on international development work with clients such as UNIDO, World Bank, KfW and GIZ. He also advises city municipalities, as well as real estate developers on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), taxonomy and portfolio strategies. He recently served as an independent consultant to the European Commission on Sustainable Development along the Belt and Road Initiative and is helping to build an Infrastructure offer in Europe.

Based in Berlin and Hamburg, Thomas is a chartered urban and regional planner as well as a licensed architect. In 2022 he was appointed to the Association of German Architects. Thomas holds a master’s degree in urban design with distinction from Harvard University, where he also received the Outstanding Leadership and Academic Excellence Awards and serves on the GSD Alumni Council. He studied architecture in Coburg, Germany, as well as urban planning at the Tongji University in Shanghai and at the MIT in Boston.

Image: Future Cities Forum on its visit to PHV Heidelberg last year, met with the city's planners to discuss the ongoing programme of development.

Thomas commented first on the multi-mobility strategy at the Patrick Henry Village (PHV) settlement near Heidelberg:

'PHV used to be a US barracks called Patrick Henry Village - a gated community. It was therefore a challenge to open it up and introduce traffic. All US barracks try to relate closely to US suburbia, so there is not much focus on public transport. At PHV it's like a US district that stopped in the 80s, and it now has to go towards a 'romanticised' version of Heidelberg. We worked with Dutch urban design firm called KCAP. They looked at the traffic demand when designing the settlement.

'Buro Happold has worked on housing and regeneration projects with quite a few former barracks and military bases including the 1930s German army tank school at Krampnitz near Potsdam, which became a Soviet barracks, then was abandoned in 1992.

'The roads there were all made with concrete foundations then covered with cobblestones, so strong enough for tanks and made to last. However it was left to decline after Red Army left and nature took back everything. The wolf and the bear moved back. However now many buildings have been re-purposed as part of a regeneration project.

'We have also been working with former US base in East Berlin where the East German secret service honour guard used to stay but there we have taken buildings down as they were of lower quality than those at Krampnitz. PHV was only empty for 10 years so the buildings were in good condition. The City of Heidelberg decided to use this settlement as a regeneration project.

'We decided to aim for fossil-free streets without cars but with a district car garage nearby. Heidelberg (city region) is not downtown Berlin or Munich where you might accept living without a car, so it can be difficult to convince people to go and live without their cars. However you have to if you want a lush green environment around the houses, where communal play is safe. Soft mobility walking and cycling is very important for this district.

'We had quite a few workshops and we used IBA Berlin and Hamburg as 'test beds', as it was important to discuss new models of housing. We also wanted to look at innovation around transport, and we needed to achieve density.'

International Building Exhibitions (IBA) are a special format of urban and regional development. They are hallmarks of national building and planning culture in Germany. For more than a century now, and these experimental fields are bringing the current issues of planning and building into the focus of national and international discussion.

Above: CGI of multi-mobility strategy in action at PHV Heidelberg (courtesy KCAP)

Thomas agreed that PHV needs investment in light rail to connect in a sustainable fashion to the city of Heidelberg:

'The project was started in 2020 and pre-Covid. What is good is that walking is now more acceptable to many people than pre-Covid, as people accept walking more than 400 metres. You need to introduce facilities to help this and the last mile delivery. Amazon does not have negative connotations in Germany and Covid brought in a focus on food delivery and dark kitchens. We have considered centrally located delivery storage boxes for PHV.'

'The Berlin 1930s Olympic Village is contaminated by cars. However when designing a new model settlement for low carbon a mobility handbook is important and ideally a 'mobility declaration' whereby new owners / residents agree to give up personal vehicles as part of deal of being able to reside in the new settlement.'

However Thomas agrees this is difficult to achieve in Germany. He commented that because there is a housing shortage that people might be persuaded to sign a declaration if it was part of the new house offer:

'If you look at the Freiburg Vauban district which became the biggest green development in the country after the French military left in 1992, it had a focus on Dual Income No Kids and the retired sectors as ideal residents so it was not the 'real city'. It is important not be too picky on who you have living there - it doesn't always work. They then tried to open things up with student housing.

'We are working on five airport projects at the moment with potential to convert to housing. All the big cities in Europe are looking to find ways to create more homes.'

Above: 'decorated' US Pershing tank outside the PHV cultural hub and concert area- previously the 'PBX' and stores at Patrick Henry Village