The Biosphere and Flower Pavilion was originally constructed for the six-month German Horticultural Show (BUGA) 2001 Potsdam, in the vicinity of the Sanssouci Palace. The project is located in the Bornstedter Fields, a site where it is used for the previous 100 years by the military for troop exercises and barracks. Designed by Berlin-based architects Barkow Leibinger, this building has an intended lifespan of at least 20 years, as a Biosphere and a major part the site’s transformation into a new residential district of nearly 20,000.

The architects looked at the history of the site as a conceptual basis for the competition-winning design. While used by both the Prussian and Nazi armies, it was the postwar creation of earthen berms to enclose Russian barracks. Then the design is generated by these forms of earthen berms, framing an artificial valley which is enclosed by a simple flat roof with multiple skylights. The Biosphere and Flower Pavilion is one of a number of projects that offer potent symbols for Germany’s post-reunification future, in this instance replacing barracks and a training ground with a giant greenhouse.

The architects veered away from creating a typical glass, greenhouse-like object on flat ground, such as previous European structures influenced by the 19th century Crystal Palace. Instead the Biosphere and Flower Pavilion merges with the existing berms by excavation that hollowed out this valley, creating an extensive sunken garden that reduces the height of the building and creating fill for additional berms. This simple maneuver defines the interior spaces, provides surfaces for planting, and allows the architects to frame views and bring in daylight in interesting ways through the opening of gaps in the sloping earth.

Inside the Biosphere and Flower Pavilion is a single 200m long space, consists of a series of extended low berms clad with plants and flowers on the south faces and stone and wood on the north faces, a combination of natural and fabric, part architecture, part landscape. They seem to represent natural geological conditions, such that water moving through the building formed the walls of the space. By framing partial views to the adjacent park, the visitor is led through a series of inclined planes covered by tropical plants and, with views of the vegetation either at ground-level or from the vantage point of suspended wood bridges. Moving along the bridges, one looks down at the water basin, saturated with vegetation, which enhances this representation.

After the six month garden show the Biosphere and Flower Pavilion will be run as a commercial attraction by Cinemax, a movie theater company. The structure will become the Cinemax Biosphere, a for-profit commercial attraction with theaters and gardens. Their 20 years lease will not only preserve the building and its contents but also its message of architecture built with the landscape, not on the landscape.

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