Pluriversal Landscape —
The city quarter Ostfeld as a symbiotic urban landscape in which urban and rural living environments are interwoven.
The Ostfeld development takes the next step in the relationship between city and landscape. The concept sees the city as nature and therefore not only as a habitat for people, but also for animals and plants. Instead of opposites, a mosaic of variously interconnected, different spaces is created in which the qualities of city and nature are synergistically combined. The result is a pluriversal urban landscape!
In its basic structure, it is guided by the qualities of landscape and urban-climat of the location and shapes the interplay of settlement and landscape space through an open space network of diverse transitional areas. These ‘ecotones’ serve as lively contact zones and experience spaces in which urban neighbourhoods and rural land uses are interlinked. The design sees these zones not as boundaries, but as corridors of appropriation that aesthetically enrich urban life and at the same time fulfil important ecological functions by absorbing rainwater and reducing the city's heat island effect through evaporative cooling.
The open space network ensures a high level of ecological connectivity of the urban landscape. It provides a green mobility network for pedestrians and cyclists and links the new urban neighbourhoods with the local and regional landscape areas. Diverse vegetation structures of so-called fringe biotopes such as hedgerow landscapes, field margins, meadow and ditch embankments, forest edges and fringes, as well as richly structured, linear park landscapes, campus open spaces and leisure gardens promote biodiversity and enable a wide range of open space uses. This close networking and diversity makes it possible to provide ecosystem services such as cooling, rainwater absorption, biodiversity and experiencing nature, healthy mobility, the harvesting of food and renewable energy in the near-natural open spaces as well as in, on and around the buildings in the urban neighbourhoods.
