In December 2005, right before its demolition, the exhibition 36 × 27 × 10 by the White Cube Berlin team took place in the cored Palast der Republik. The great success of the exhibition, which lasted only eleven days, led to a debate in Berlin’s cultural politics about the necessity of a permanent art gallery for contemporary art. The Temporäre Kunsthalle (temporary art gallery) located at the site of the former Palast der Republik was realized as a private initiative in 2008 and dismantled in 2010. After its closure, the then Governing Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit initiated a competition for a new temporary art gallery at Humboldthafen. The project Kunsthalle Gesundbrunnen was an entry to this competition that bypassed the implications of urban development policy and election campaign tactics, or rather used them to show for the first time how Berlin could actually come to a permanent art gallery at a reasonable price.
The submitted project met all the requirements of the call for proposals—particularly with regard to adherence to the tight budget of 300,000 euros—but proposed a different location: an area on the Humboldthain near Gesundbrunnen, at the former site of the Hertha BSC soccer club, surrounded by heterogeneous buildings and large railway station facilities. At the beginning of the 1990s, an investor acquired the 8,200 square meter site from the city and began the construction of a sports park with a hotel and underground squash courts. During construction work on the basement, the company went bankrupt and the project had to be abandoned. The land became the property of the Berlin Mitte district again and has since been managed as a “problem site.” Although the strategy of appropriating derelict land and building ruins had long been tried and tested in Berlin, the potential of the site was not exploited.
The appeal of the proposal lies on the one hand in the emotional value that the Hertha BSC site has for the Wedding workers’ district. This allows the art establishment to form a connection with the site that has a positive effect on the surroundings without the traditional residents feeling alienated. On the other hand, the project also offers financial advantages: In the basement, a hall already exists that could be easily adapted for exhibition purposes. The space could be successively expanded to include other uses, such as artist studios or residential units. The skimming of profits from the development of the site offers financing options for the art sector. If the city does not wish to act as operator, alternative financing models are conceivable. One scenario envisaged that a group of architectural firms develops the site up to the second floor using collective know-how and shared competences. Anything beyond that could be profitably marketed by the city to refinance the land deal either on its own or with the help of an investor. This would make the Kunsthalle project realistically feasible.
Shortly after the proposal was submitted, it became known that the site had been sold to a private investor at very favorable conditions a few weeks earlier. In any case, the proposal has provided an impetus to rethink the debate at the time: on the one hand, with regard to a (permanent) art gallery for Berlin, and on the other hand, with regard to the allocation of land owned by the public sector.