Ludwigshafen
Transforming the main traffic artery entirely, the re-design of the Helmut Kohl Allee frees up large areas for urban renewal. The masterplan forms a new urban paradigm where green landscapes and urban life seamlessly mix.
Today identified by the lifeless backside character of the Helmut Kohl Allee that cuts the inner city in halfs, the City of Ludwigshafen is determined to find new development strategies that will reconnect neighbourhoods. Transforming the urban landscape with a holistic approach that integrates nature and the city will strengthen the experience and quality of the inner city. Three overall planning strategies, designed as a flexible set of structural tools, ensures that the transformation process can evolve over time to meet changing public demands, demography and mobility patterns.
Each of the three planning strategies is founded in thorough analysis of the urban scales affecting the project: the city, the neighbourhoods and the local.
The Active Link: The proposal transforms the current infrastructural situation creating massive barriers in the inner city into an accessible and green urban artery. This new mobility corridor links gates to the city and reconnects previously divided districts.
The Green Heart: A network of green-blue corridors strengthens the presence of nature and water throughout the urban fabric and links its parts together. It integrates natural climate adaption as well as and the overall experience of the city and the wellbeing of its residents.
A Growing City: The transformation of Helmut Kohl Allee unlocks a huge potential to connect, and revitalize the inner city. It recreates neighbourhoods and strengthens the green potential by redesigning the Friedenspark as Ludwigshafen’s Green Heart to enhance life quality and biodiversity in the city.
Reduce: The proposal suggests ways to limit traffic in the inner city aming to cut emissions and make pedestrain friedsly options the obvious choice. The masterplan shows a city of short distances, ensuring accessibility to both social and cultural anchors.
Reuse: The masterplan transform existing urban areas, densifying and rethinking former infrastructure as opposed to developing open land.
Regenerate: The Friedenspark becomes the central element in the city's green infrastructure, linking the inner city with the wider landscape and enhancing biodiversity. The redesigned boulevard improves the microclimate, local water management, and resilience against urban heat.
Reconnect: The masterplan form strategies to reconnect the city by rethinking the barrier that now identifies the inner city - turning the Helmut Kohl Allee into a green, and people-friendly mobility space.
The masterplan suggests to focus development in the neighbourhoods that borders the Helmut Kohl Allee directly, both by densifying the plots and by focusing on connections and egde zones. The new development is attached to the existing urban structure as a natutal continuation, ensuring smooth phasing with a maximal impact in each step.
Under the elevated parts of the boulevard, the abandonned backside is transformed into an attractive public activity space.
Type: Competition 1st prize
Program: Masterplan
Client: LCE LuCityEntwicklungs GmbH, Stadt Ludwigshafen
Size: 37 ha
Location: Ludwigshafen DE
Year: 2024 - 2025
