MA Design Studio, SOSE 26: Bogensee Ecologies - Ecotone
Authors: Kassian Berz, Natalia Ramirez, Sevinç Sena Öztürk, and Hélia Aublive-Schneider.
Bogensee is a contested landscape shaped by successive forms of territorial control. Initially used as a hunting ground, it later became the location of the Goebbels villa and was subsequently transformed during the GDR era into an educational campus for international students. Today, its abandoned buildings, lake and surrounding woodland embody overlapping political, ecological and material memories, while the future of the site remains the subject of ongoing public and institutional debate. This project approaches Bogensee through the broader question: **Is it possible to make the city and the forest resilient at the same time?** Brandenburg is often understood as two separate worlds—the city and the forest. However, this separation overlooks the territories in which urban and ecological systems already meet, interact and continuously negotiate each other’s futures. We define these territories as **ecotones**: not boundary lines between forest and city, but dynamic spatial conditions shaped by demographic change, ecological succession, infrastructure, human activity and climate pressure. The project therefore understands rewilding not simply as the withdrawal of human intervention, but as the redesign of the relationship between humans, forests and urban development. What is conventionally perceived as a homogeneous forest at Bogensee is instead approached as a complex living system containing diverse species, histories, material remains and forms of occupation. By reconsidering the forest as an active subject rather than a passive object, the project seeks to establish a more reciprocal and attentive relationship between human and non-human life.
Using Brandenburg’s existing framework of **Zentraler Orte**, protected forest landscapes and demographic development, we formulate adaptable territorial strategies that combine ecological restoration, social participation, environmental education and local economies. Within this framework, Bogensee is identified as an **activated Social Island within a compressed ecotone**.
Rather than restoring Bogensee as an isolated heritage object or abandoning it entirely to ecological succession, the project proposes its gradual reconnection to the evolving forest–city system. In this way, the site can become a catalyst for ecologically responsible management, public life and environmental learning. Ultimately, the project argues that resilience does not emerge from cities or forests independently, but from the evolving landscapes and relationships that connect them. The ecotone thus becomes not merely a transitional zone, but an infrastructure for Brandenburg’s future.