An alternative attitude towards the treatment of a former military landscape can be seen in Florian Beigel's competition winning project for the re-development at Lichterfelde-SŸd. The site is a former American army base in the south of Berlin and a central aspect of the scheme was that any new development of the site should be structured around existing landscape and infrastructural elements, many of which, given the recent history of the site, carry the memory of the cold war occupation of the site by the American military. 5

The proposal to re-use the concrete military road in it's literal material form as the main access road for the housing settlements in the southern part of the site was considered highly contentious. Titled 'Amerikanisher Stra§e' in the competition drawings, opponents of the proposal were quick to re-title the road 'Panzer Stra§e'. It's associations were considered too strong.

Old military road at Lichterfelde Sud, Berlin. photograph by Philip Christou 1997

On the one hand there were practical objections to the retention of the actual fabric of the road, in this case large in-situ plates of concrete: Was it wide enough for a modern road specification? How could cables and other services be laid in it?

But behind these practical arguments lay a deeper concern whch has somethiing more to do with the political charge and associations of this space. As discussions on the project develop, so too will the nature of this new-old road space. Perhaps it will contimue to exist simply as a line in the landscape re-stating the former line of the wall which lies some two hundred metres to the south. Perhaps the old concrete will be left in the ground next to a newly built asphalt or concrete highway, long grassgrowing up in the strip between. The question is not simply whether to destroy or to preserve, but rather how the imprint of this substantial physical structure is projected into a future condition of the landscape.

What is interesting in the work of both Parker and the Wilson's could be described as something like a quality of memory. Both works cited speak of the way in which the potential for violence is embodied in specific places and artefacts. As an architect or landscape architect witha responsibility for the future of former military lands these issues are clearly of primary importance. How can architectural and landscape strategies articulate the relationship between violence and its opposite. What qualities of collective, cultural memory can be recovered in these sites of muzzled violence?