City garden on the bunker Hamburg St. Pauli

The concept for the planting of the urban garden on the bunker is sensibly based on the model of natural vegetation with its horizontal structure and staggered growth. The aim is to realise a planting that is as green or wintergreen as possible all year round, whereby consideration must be given to the extreme site conditions and stability and sustainability in particular have priority. The aim is not to create the image of an "English landscape park", but rather the plants will grow at an angle, e.g. due to the effects of the wind, and have a loose "dishevelled" growth. Thematically, this image will fit very well with the colorful image of the participation areas and the character of the district.

Award for the use of plantsGerman Landscape Architecture Award 2025

Jury verdict:
The green bunker in the heart of the Elbe metropolis proves to be a perfectly harmonised composition of plants, both in terms of design and function, which will merge more and more with the concrete bunker from year to year and thus actually create a piece of urban nature.

Of course, a project like this is not possible without sophisticated technology: a large proportion of the rainwater collected is temporarily stored and used for irrigation. However, on closer inspection, the planting concept implemented here is not only surprisingly rich in species, but is also based on the lost-place principle: which plants are able to re-colonise abandoned buildings and reclaim a piece of land? Combined with experience from around 50 years of greening buildings, the result is a planting that not only defies wind and radiation (for example through compact growth, small leaves, layers of wax and hairiness), but which also has a certain natural dynamism due to its different ages.

The ‘teachers’ for the placement of the plants were often comparable natural locations. Overhanging plants play a decisive role and ensure a green appearance that is visible from afar, despite the numerous windows and limited planting areas and troughs.The fact that the combination of roof and façade greening also ‘protects’ a 1,400 square metre roof garden, which itself consists of 4,700 shrubs and 16,000 perennials and the total greened area adds up to over 10,000 square metres, are of course impressive figures.Ultimately, however, it is the pioneering quality of the use of plants that makes the project an outstanding contribution.