Counter Narrative

In November 2024, we came together in direct opposition to the Tempelhofer Feld Idea Competition, a procedure designed to weaken the Tempelhofer-Feld-Gesetz by disguising construction as participation.

Faced with a process that invited architects and citizens to legitimise development on a legally protected field, we chose a different strategy: we entered the competition to refuse it. 

We transformed a space intended for design proposals into a space for democratic debate.

We developed and distributed a competition-compliant starter kit, which enabled architects to submit legally valid projects that said only one thing: no construction. Each submission was a formal, professional rejection, defending the law as Berliners voted for it in the 2014 referendum.

Of the 164 submissions received by the Senate, 72 explicitly rejected construction. What began as an attempt to normalise development was forced to acknowledge resistance. Four out of six awarded projects ultimately stood against building in the field.

The procedure culminates in the final exhibition in September 2025, where “no construction” is publicly displayed in direct contradiction to the Senate’s original imperative to develop Tempelhofer Feld. Through this collective refusal, architects compelled the Senate to speak a “no” on behalf of the public, reasserting democratic authority against private development interests and reclaiming architecture as a political act.

Starter-Kit

The Starter-Kit transformed participation into a form of protest. Rather than proposing new development, it enabled architects, landscape architects, and urban planners to submit legally valid competition entries arguing for the preservation of Tempelhofer Feld.

Designed to meet the competition’s formal requirements, the Starter-Kit lowered the barrier to participation by providing a ready-made layout, submission instructions, and pre-written text defending the Tempelhofer-Feld-Gesetz. Participants could submit it unchanged or adapt it to develop their own arguments.

The Starter-Kit was not a design proposal. It was an infrastructural tool: a shared framework that transformed individual criticism into collective visibility. Through repeated submission, “do not build” became visible not as an isolated opinion, but as a professional position within the competition itself.

Of the 164 competition entries, 20 used the Starter-Kit as is, while another 52 submitted different non-building proposals. Together, 72 submissions rejected construction on Tempelhofer Feld, ensuring that opposition became part of the competition’s official record and public exhibition.

To our knowledge, this was the first organised protest carried out from within an official architectural ideas competition, using the competition itself as a democratic instrument of dissent.