GELSENKIRCHEN COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL
MUNICH JEWISH CENTRE
GROSSZIEHTEN PROTESTANT PARISH CENTRE
PENZBERG ISLAMIC FORUM
WELTQUARTIER (WORLD QUARTER) HAMBURG
spaces
PRAGER STRASSE APARTMENT BLOCK DRESDEN
LABORATORY OF IDEAS FRANKFURT AM MAIN
MEMORIAL TO THE MURDERED JEWS OF EUROPE BERLIN
heroEs
NEIGHBOURHOOD MOTHERS BERLIN-NEUKÖLLN
INTERNATIONAL GARDENS GÖTTINGEN
TOR ZUR WELT HAMBURG-WILHELMSBURG
joker
GELSENKIRCHEN COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL – THE CITY´S PROMISE: OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL
Gelsenkirchen-Bismarck, 1996 - 2007
The Evangelische Gesamtschule Gelsenkirchen (Gelsenkirchen Protestant Comprehensive School) was a long-term project. Fourteen years elapsed between winning the competition in 1993 and completing the project – the result of a comprehensive planning process. Future users and neighbours were consulted, and local participation and networking fostered a sense of identification. The result was an ecologically built interdenominational district school for 1,150 students.
The school campus resembles a small town, with a main building, roads and an inner market square. The architecture is based on places in the city that particularly captivate, impress and stimulate people. The school is not just a monolith; it has a multi-layered, organic appearance – not least because the individual classroom buildings were designed together with the students. There are five classroom buildings for each student year-group and together these form one of the six rows of buildings, with no two buildings alike. The impressiveness of the buildings lies in the generous use of space across two storeys, and each class has its own garden and its own sanitation facilities.
The Evangelical Church of Westphalia runs the school, but its intake includes, in addition to Protestants, one third Catholic and one third Muslim students. It is open to local residents and, as a community school, is a bearer of hope for social integration especially for mining families of Turkish origin after the closure of the local mines. The school’s ecological philosophy is reflected in its architecture through the use of sustainable building materials and the presence of a solar energy concept.
Overall Planning:
plus+ bauplanung GmbH Hübner - Forster - Eggler
(seit 1999: plus+ bauplanung GmbH Hübner - Forster - Hübner), Neckartenzlingen
Client:
Protestant School in Westphalia, Gelsenkirchen,
represented by the Evangelical Church of Westphalia, Bielefeld
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HOUSES OF WORSHIP – THREE EXAMPLES OF INTERCULTURAL TOLERANCE
A city for everyone, including all religions – for Jews, Muslims, Christians and all the others – that is one of the aims of Cosmopolis, the international urban society. The architecture of its houses of worship comes to symbolise tolerance and intercultural diversity.
Munich Jewish Centre, 2006
The Jewish Centre in Munich provides a new space for the richness of Jewish life that the Third Reich destroyed. Thanks to the new main synagogue, the community centre and the Jewish Museum there has been a meeting centre for the Jewish community in the heart of the city since 2006. The most important building is the east-facing synagogue. The massive stone base is intended to recall the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and the lightfilled glass cube covered in a copper net to recall the Tent of Meeting and the Israelites’ journey through the desert.
Grossziethen Protestant Parish Centre, 2007
The blueprint for the Protestant parish centre in Grossziethen describes a building that exudes a sense of quiet and a feeling of security. Based on the traditional ground plan of farmhouses in the region, its exterior walls are clad in painted tiles, another feature of local architecture. The parish centre opens up with an inviting gesture, mediating as a new part of the village ensemble between the benchmarks of the existing cubic shapes of the school, the church and the other buildings without overshadowing its own purpose and importance.
The synagogue has returned, from a rear courtyard location to the centre of the old town. The mosque is on the main road in a small German town. Both houses of worship symbolise their belief on a basis of equality, as does the Christian parish centre in eastern Germany, where many churches went to rack and ruin until German reunification.
Penzberg Islamic Forum, 2005
Hemmed in between the city centre and an industrial estate, surrounded by Alpine-style homes, the Islamic Forum with its distinctive stone exterior and its slender minaret provides a pleasant counterpoint, and the architecture lends expression to the openness and self confidence of a young Islamic community. Large expanses of window made up of shards of blue glass create a mood of joie de vivre and transcendence and establish a connection between contemporary architecture and a deep sense of religiousness.
Munich Jewish Centre
Architects:
Wandel Hoefer Lorch GmbH Architekten + Stadtplaner BDA, Saarbrücken
www.wandel-hoefer-lorch.de
Client:
State Capital of Munich and Jewish Religious Community of Munich
www.juedischeszentrumjakobsplatz.de
Grossziethen Protestant Parish Centre
Architects:
Klaus Block, Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Architekt BDA, Berlin www.klausblock.de
Client:
Protestant Parochial Church Council of Grossziethen
Penzberg Islamic Forum
Architects:
jasarevic architekten, Mering
www.b-au.com
Client:
Islamic Community of Penzberg e.V.
www.islam-penzberg.de
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WELTQUARTIER (WORLD QUARTER) – INTERCULTURAL LIVING AND WORKING
Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, 2009 - 2013
More than 1,700 people from over 30 countries live in the Weltquartier (World Quarter). As part of Internationale Bauausstellung Hamburg (Hamburg International Building Exhibition), a pilot project for intercultural living is taking shape here, with modernisation measures that meet the different needs of the residents. A new kind of participation procedure enabled what in some cases were very different interests to be taken into consideration.
Built as a housing estate for working people in the 1930s, the Weltquartier is one of the most culturally varied ones in Wilhelmsburg, an island in the River Elbe in Hamburg. In order to find out more about the specific cultural wishes of the residents with regard to the modernisation project, a new kind of participation procedure was launched. This involved using an intercultural planning workshop with researchers who interviewed people in their native languages. The results were used to compile a catalogue of recommendations that formed part of an international competition for ideas on urban development. Taking into consideration the needs of the multicultural residents, the winning entry included floor plans for family-friendly flats with plenty of rooms as well as loggias on the inner courtyard side of the buildings to expand the living area and provide additional space.
Refurbishing the estate and its 820-odd flats will also fulfil exacting energy-efficiency requirements for climate protection while retaining the redbrick exterior walls in honour of Hamburg’s brickwork tradition.
Potential of a different kind is to be found in a commercial area and a garage block. The diverse facilities that are already there are to be enhanced while new facilities are to be provided to enable tradespeople to set up new businesses – especially small businesses run by migrants.
Architects:
Architecture and overall planning:
kfs krause feyerabend sippel architektur + innenarchitektur, Lübeck
www.kfs-architekten.de
Weimarer Platz pavilion:
Kunst + Herbert, Hamburg
www.kunstherbert.de
Newbuild of gatehouse in Neuhöfer Strasse:
Gerber Architekten, Dortmund & Hamburg
www.gerberarchitekten.de
Newbuild at Weimarer Strasse:
knerer + lang Architekten GmbH, Dresden
www.knererlang.de
Landscape architecture:
ARGE Sven Andresen + Urte Schlie Landschaftsarchitektur, Lübeck
www.andresen-landschaftsarchitekten.de
Client:
SAGA GWG, Hamburg
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Modern mas housing as a potential for the city
Dresden, 2007
The Prager Strasse apartment block, 240 metres long, with 12 floors and over 500 flats, used to be a stark and powerful monument to the socialist prefabricated high-rise architecture with which East Germany sought in the 1960s to prove that it was a world leader in modern urban development. Today people of different nationalities and from different social strata live together here under one roof.
More than 15 years after German reunification in 1989, the block gained a last-minute reprieve from falling into a state of dilapidation and decay in 2006. Refurbishment was undertaken on the assumption that distinctive design and architectural input could be combined with manageable costs. Elegant new metal latticework balustrades and loggias have upgraded the facades, small flats have been merged into larger units, and the oppressive length of the central corridors has been broken up by colour concepts.
The block houses shops and restaurants, commercial enterprises and flats for a wide range of residential requirements: low-budget living for Dresden commuters who like living near the main railway station, urban living for enterprising single people, and senior-friendly living for the growing numbers of old-age pensioners from western Germany who are moving east to where prices are lower. On the penthouse deck, space that was once put to temporary use has now been converted into exclusive loft apartments with stunning views of the River Elbe and the Frauenkirche at moderate rents.
The result has been a transformation of the underrated 1960s structure into a supersize multigenerational and multicultural apartment block that gives tenants value for money.
Architects:
knerer und lang Architekten GmbH, Dresden
www.knererlang.de
Client:
GAFGAH GROUP, Dresden
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LABORATORY OF IDEAS – Participation by means of urban activities
Frankfurt am Main, 2005 - 2010
The Ideenlabor (Laboratory of Ideas) is a series of events consisting of the Stadtumbausalons (urban renewal salons) and the UMBAUBAR (Renewal Bar). They provide a framework within which ideas and players, spaces and uses, and ideas – tried, trusted and new – can be combined. A revival of the 2005 Ideenlabor is planned to give a further fillip to urban renewal in Frankfurt’s Bahnhofsviertel (railway station area).
The aim remains the same: to promote and reinvigorate living in the railway station area. It is still an area of Frankfurt where few people live. Back in 2005 the Laboratory of Ideas was an unusual, activity-oriented concept designed to draw up a framework plan. One hundred ideas were drawn up and 40 of them were selected, put on show in an empty house and discussed with the public. Using the »urban activities« concept and holding intensive evening discussions on the themes, suggestions made by 600 people were collected over a four-week period and these directly influenced the ideas and the development of the framework plan. A spezial form of debate is sure to have played a leading role. Entitled »Stadt geht durch den Magen« (The way to a city’s heart is through its stomach), it featured a »scene cook« who cooked lunches while art exhibitions, installations and festivities took place.
In 2009 this promising approach is to be taken up again. Selected urban renewal issues are to be discussed in urban renewal salons on four dates over a period of one year. On a weekly basis the Renewal Bar is taking up urban issues or aspects of designing neighbourhoods that are worth living in. All those who are interested – residents, users, tradespeople and businesspeople – have the opportunity to inform themselves about projects and to exchange ideas. This will enable good use to be made of creative and innovative potential for the future development of Frankfurt’s Bahnhofsviertel.
Project management:
bb22 | architekten + stadtplaner gbr | urbane projekte, Frankfurt am Main
Awarding authority:
Municipal Planning and Highways Construction Department, Frankfurt am Main
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Berlin, 2005
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in the heart of Berlin is Germany’s central holocaust monument, a memorial to the six million victims.
It consists of a field of stelae and an underground information centre and is maintained by a German federal foundation.
Berlin, the German capital, underwent a divided development as a result of the division of Germany, with the Iron Curtain running right through the centre of the city. The result was a unique disused area in the heart of the city. However, not just the city disappeared beneath the Berlin Wall and its barbed wire – the historical significance of this site disappeared along with it. Before World War II this area housed the German Reich’s diplomatic and government area.
In the vicinity of the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate and the new US embassy a powerful monument built on a 19,000-square-metre strip of the former Berlin Wall immediately captivates and mesmerises viewer and visitor alike. Its 2,711 concrete stelae with differing heights of up to 4.7 metres tall create a wave-like effect.
An underground information centre complements the abstract shape of the memorial as it provides information about the victims by recalling as many names as possible of murdered Jews and recounting the history of exemplary lives and families.
The field of stelae recalls human dignity and mutual tolerance and invites the visitor both to stand still and contemplate and to embark on a playful voyage of discovery. It thereby enriches Berlin, the reunited metropolis.
Architects:
Peter Eisenman, Eisenman Architects, New York (USA)
www.eisenmanarchitects.com
»Place of Information«, designed by:
Dagmar von Wilcken, Berlin
www.dagmarvonwilcken.com
Client:
The Foundation for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin
www.holocaust-mahnmal.de
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NEIGHBOURHOOD MOTHERS – HEROINES OF
EVERYDAY LIFE
Berlin-NeukÖlln, since 2004
A wide range of ways and means is required to enable children to grow up healthily and express their individual talents and abilities irrespective of their social background. The Neighbourhood Mothers practise a new concept of providing low-threshold help and assistance.
The Neighbourhood Mothers are mainly women of Turkish or Arab origin, these being the largest groups of immigrants in Germany. On a six-month course they are trained in nursery school education and school education, remedial language instruction, childhood development phases, education without violence, healthy eating and much more. On completing the course, the neighbourhood mothers visit families in their home environment. A different topic is addressed at each of ten meetings. The neighbourhood mothers offer specific advice, such as how to register children for a crèche so that they can learn German in addition to their native language at an early stage. They advocate non-violent, respectful education and equal rights to remedial support for boys and girls.
Close cooperation has evolved with crèches, parents’ cafés and school support units where students can discuss problems with care officers – and, of course, with teachers and teaching assistants. By June 2009 over 160 neighbourhood mothers had qualified and visited over 2,200 families. This model of mediation between cultures has triggered interest in other Berlin neighbourhoods and other local authority areas.
The neighbourhood mothers have meanwhile assumed an exemplary role in their own social surroundings. Women who used to be on the periphery of society are now at its very heart.
Project agency:
Diakonisches Werk Neukölln Oberspree e.V., Berlin, in cooperation with the borough of Neukölln, the Senate Department of Urban Development, the Senate Department of Integration, Employment and Welfare and the Neukölln Job Centre, Berlin
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GÖttingen, since 1996
For people with different cultural backgrounds to work in their gardens and spend their spare time together is by no means a matter of course in Germany. Göttingen’s international garden pioneers have shown how it is done. Families from 19 countries are involved in this project, which makes the cultures of the world visible in their gardens and demonstrates that variety is a horn of plenty.
The first intercultural gardens were laid out in 1996 thanks to the initiative of refugees, migrants and German families in Göttingen. Based on ecological gardening, do-it-yourself craftsmanship, language and literacy courses and environmental education organised by the people themselves, entirely new possibilities and experiences are opened up for those taking part. Active participation makes social and professional integration of refugee and migrant families possible. Above all, the gardens are living places where people can come together and shape the urban space and neighbourhoods that they share.
In 2003 the fifth garden – the »Friedensgarten«, or »Peace Garden« – was inaugurated in the Grone district of Göttingen. On about 5,000 m2 of previously derelict land, 23 families from eight different countries were each allocated small allotments on which to grow vegetables, herbs and flowers for their own use. The garden is a meeting point and promotes intercultural communication in the district.
The International Gardens idea has caught on. Nearly 90 more gardens similar to those in Göttingen have now been set up in over 50 cities and towns across Germany, and the same number is at the planning stage. This is a successful model for any city.
Project management:
Internationale Gärten e.V., Göttingen
www.internationale-gaerten.de
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Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, 2007 - 2012
The »Tor zur Welt« (Gateway to the World) centre is a local educational facility that sets an example for the whole of Germany. Architecturally ambitious and exemplary in its energy efficiency, the project combines new buildings for three existing schools, a school and business centre and a multifunctional, environmental and science centre. It would not have been possible without the many local participants in the educational sector.
On completion in 2012, »Tor zur Welt« will be an educational centre for young and old alike and for all cultures. Its keystone is a multifunctional centre with a wide range of advisory and educational facilities, a self-learning centre, a café and a spacious function room with a stage that will be a meeting place for the entire neighbourhood. The immediate connection with the neighbourhood is reflected in the way the buildings have been specially arranged to open outwards as well as in the new public space, the »Agora«.
»Tor zur Welt« is a central building block of »DIE NEUE WELTKLASSE – Bildungsoffensive Elbinseln« (THE NEW WORLD CLASS – Elbe Islands Educational Offensive). A cross-sectional project and part of Internationale Bauausstellung Hamburg (Hamburg International Building Exhibition), the project aims to draw up models and strategies for a future-proof integrated educational landscape and neighbourhood development. Systematic networking of existing facilities, initiatives and projects is intended to improve the educational situation and prospects for social integration on the Elbe island on a lasting basis. Nineteen local groups and 120 players are working hard to achieve this objective in keeping with a long-standing tradition of popular participation and wide-ranging networking approaches in this Hamburg district.
Architects:
bof architekten, Hamburg
www.bof-architekten.de
Landscape architects:
Breimann & Bruun Garten- und Landschaftsarchitekten MAA, Hamburg
www.breimannbruun.de
Client:
GWG Gewerbe, Hamburg, in cooperation with the Free and Hanseatic City
of Hamburg
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Eva Hertzsch and Adam Page present SECUROPRODS.© The Demonstration Models
© Eva Hertzsch and Adam Page
Today’s new commercial buildings are designed to provide the public with refuge from the dangers of being outdoors. They must facilitate a fine but effective differentiation between social groups, ensuring pleasant sojourn for consumers yet vigilance towards loiterers, accommodating official ceremonies yet preventing spontaneous gatherings. In response to such demands, the artists Eva Hertzsch and Adam Page have created a series of attractive entrance features whose unique design enables their transformation into state-of the art security devices in a matter of minutes, according to escalations in or around the building. They are being marketed under the name of SECUROPRODS.©
SP981 Revolving door & Security turnstile
A revolving door entrance unit. Creates a welcoming, pleasant yet professional impression as an entry marker to a property lot. SECUROPRODS.©’ unique design enables the rapid transformation of this unit into a security turnstile preventing entrance, according to the situation on your property..
SP 981’s kit-form components dismantle simply into a compact bundle, facilitating rapid transportation to »problem« points.
Crafted from aluminium and quality extruded polystyrene foam in 4
pastel colours.
140 x 180 x 200 cm. Including demonstration video!
Eva Hertzsch and Adam Page, 1998
Kunstfonds Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
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