Blue Hour at Spreepark by Modulorbeat – Transforming an Abandoned Landmark into a Cultural Park Installation in Berlin

Berlin’s historic Spreepark, once a thriving amusement park in the GDR era, is undergoing a remarkable transformation into a public green space. Among the first interventions to mark this renewal is the “Blue Hour” installation by German architecture studio Modulorbeat, a poetic example of adaptive reuse, site-specific art, and experimental park architecture.

From Forgotten Landmark to Open Cultural Landscape

Located in the Plänterwald forest, Spreepark has a layered past. It opened as East Germany’s only amusement park and later fell into disuse after the political shift and the operator’s insolvency. For decades, it stood as an urban relic — silent, overgrown, and sealed from public life. Now, the city is reimagining the site as an inclusive green destination for citizens, blending history, art, and nature.

As part of this revival, Modulorbeat was invited to explore the potential of the park’s former fast-food restaurant and entertainment venue, the Mero-Halle. The project is both an architectural intervention and an artistic research experiment, using the “blue hour” — the twilight moments between day and night — as a metaphor for transformation and change.

Design Concept – Twilight as a Metaphor for Transition

The “blue hour” represents the shift between two states — light and darkness, past and future, inactivity and renewal. Similarly, the installation bridges the park’s dormant state and its future public life.

Working with the existing MERO steel structure, Modulorbeat reinforced and enhanced it with a gentian blue corrosion-protection coating — a vibrant color rarely found in nature, making the structure stand out against the greenery. This intervention preserves the building’s industrial heritage while giving it a contemporary identity.

Spatial Experience – Hybrid Between Structure and Nature

The installation is not a conventional building but an open, adaptable framework for encounters, performances, and leisure. The preserved roof structure and its cast shadows inspired new design elements such as partial canopies, which provide shelter from rain or sun while framing shifting views of the sky.

Curtain partitions create flexible zones within the open hall, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside. Openings in the existing floor slab allow planting to grow through, merging architecture and landscape into a unified environment. Benches invite visitors to rest, observe, and engage, while the open plan encourages a range of spontaneous and programmed activities.

A Living Test for the Future Spreepark

Initially conceived as a temporary test installation, “Blue Hour” proved so successful in fostering public engagement that it will now remain as a permanent feature in the redeveloped Spreepark. Its design demonstrates how minimal, resource-conscious interventions can activate disused urban spaces without erasing their historical layers.

All photographs are works of Jan Kampshoff