It was a cold and rainy Berlin night in the spring of 2015 and an unusual idea arose.

Finnish architect Martti Mela had to ride his bike home from a birthday around midnight.

He had a short way to go, but it was pouring rain and he was soaking wet.

Suddenly he heard the rattle of the subway above his head.

As he drove along the viaduct on Skalitzer Strasse in Kreuzberg for ten minutes, the idea came to him that could soon change the cityscape of Berlin.

Kevin Hanschke

Volunteer.

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He wondered why he couldn't ride his bike under the three-kilometer-long viaduct - then and now, parking lots, intersections and concrete bollards block the way.

A bicycle highway would be the solution for cycling through the city protected from the weather.

The idea for the bike paths under the viaduct never let go of him.

A few months later he teamed up with town planners, architects and graphic designers in the Paper Planes association.

"A new kind of urbanity"

According to Johanna Schelle, the project group spokeswoman, they all ask themselves similar questions: How can Berlin become more bike-friendly and greener? What should mobility look like in the city of the future? In November 2015 the association, which strives for "a new kind of urbanity", was registered. Shortly afterwards, the first project called "Radbahn Berlin" was presented, for which the underground viaduct of underground lines 1 and 3 is to be converted into a covered cycle path with greenery. The cycle path should be more than nine kilometers long and lead right through the center of Berlin, from the Zoologischer Garten train station in Charlottenburg to the Oberbaumbrücke in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.

The plans are big: At the Möckernbrücke station, a river pool is planned for the Landwehr Canal.

There should be benches, lookouts, cafes and wooden terraces, similar to the park on the High Line in Manhattan.

The project is currently in the "laboratory phase".

By 2023, the viaduct is to be redesigned into a bicycle road in the “Reallabor Radbahn” on a stretch of more than a kilometer.

For this purpose, Paper Planes received 3.3 million euros from the federal government and the state of Berlin for the years 2019 to 2023.

The response seems to be great.

The citizens had clearly spoken out in favor of the cycle track in test votes.

A bold plan for three kilometers of unfinished motorway

Only a few kilometers further, for the south-east of Berlin, the association has developed another design, the “morning farm”. The visualizations for this show people harvesting green heads of lettuce and glass greenhouses in which tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables grow. Along a strawberry patch, children are guided through the farm and taught about sustainable agriculture - the association has now presented this future concept to the public. It is about the controversial 16th construction phase of Berlin's A 100 urban motorway. Where it is planned that tens of thousands of cars per day will thunder over the asphalt in two years, solar cells will form a roof over beekeeping and vegetable patches. A vertical farm is a bold plan for three kilometers of unfinished highway - a sectionwhich will have cost a record sum of 700 million euros to be completed and has sparked controversy in the Berlin government coalition.