SMART SPACE Hardenbergplatz: From Forecourt to City Square – Designing and Operating Smart Spaces

Project objectives

By 2026, the pilot project SMART SPACE Hardenbergplatz (HAD) will develop Hardenbergplatz from a typical station forecourt into a smart city square with increased quality of use and stay. Among other things, areas of the public space in front of Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten will be made available for flexible booking in the upcoming years. 

For more detailed information, please visit our project website here.

Project components 

To realise its objectives, the HAD pilot project works in three interlocking sub-projects: Operator Model, Booking and Negotiation Platform and Pop-Up Interventions. 

• The "Operator Model" team clarifies the legal framework and develops the basics for an innovative management of public spaces. 
• The "Booking and Negotiation Platform" team is developing a web application to make public space accessible digitally, quickly and efficiently - for the administration as well as current and future users of the space. 
• The "Pop-Up Interventions" group is developing the spatial concept, which is intended to increase the quality of stay and use of the square with measures such as street furniture, greening and other physical interventions. 

Background - Gemeinsam Digital: Berlin

The pilot project SMART SPACE Hardenbergplatz (HAD) is part of "Gemeinsam Digital: Berlin", the smart city strategy of the state of Berlin. It was published at the end of 2022 and is currently implemented by five pilot projects. The aim is to create solutions for a smart Berlin that can be transferred to other areas of the city in the future through structured, iterative process phases. 

Participation modules & outdoor exhibition

Through your participation, the project can gain important insights about the users of the square and their needs. Please support the project partners from the community, business and academia in making the public space more flexible and thus opening up new possibilities for Berlin and its residents. The results of the citizen participation will be fed into the project and the development of the prototypes. 

In conjunction with this participation, the HAD project presents its contents and objectives through an outdoor exhibition on Hardenbergplatz. You can find a digital version of the exhibition on our project website.