Berlin is Europe’s second biggest city but, in comparison with all other metropolises, the density of people melded together is quite low. Space-wise, Berlin is amazingly big and there are a lot of green gardens, parks and unused spaces inside the city that work as air-pollution filters and social relaxation zones.
Parks are used in many different ways by diverse groups of people:
- Immigrants from Turkey use the huge Tiergarten Park right in the heart of the city for their weekend barbeques.
- Wromänner-Park, to the west of the city, is used by Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants for an illegal, but tolerated, food market.
- Grunewald forest, in the south of Berlin, is used by thousands of in-line skaters every weekend.
- Before they go clubbing, the younger generation gathers in the Mauerpark, on the borderline between East and West that split the city in two from 1961 to 1989.
- Other gardens and parks are also used by homeless people, drug traffickers or as cruising areas for the gay community.

This kind of usage is, of course, comparable with other European cities, but it is much more widespread. It could be seen as a sign showing the remarkable “free space” that is still available in Berlin. “Free space” in two ways: on the one hand, capturing the liberal mood of the city that is not comparable with other cities in Germany, and on the other, the spatial connotation of Berlin as a metropolis with low housing prices and plots of land that are still used publicly and have not yet been developed for any kind of business use.
The photographic research by Keynan Dietrich and Mercedes Peinemann shows different “free-zones” all over Berlin and tries to find the particular structure of their temporary usage.