spaces

TXL+ Berlin
FÜrst-PÜckler-Land Brandenburg
SUSTAINABLE HEAD OFFICE UNILEVER

heroes
Solar Decathlon Darmstadt

WOODEN HIGH BUILDING E3 BERLIN
Werner Sobek Stuttgart

joker

TROPICAL FOREST

BRANDHORST MUSEUM COLLECTION – THE NEW AESTHETICS OF ECO-FRIENDLY CONSTRUCTION
Munich, 2008

Coalmining marked the start of industrialisation in the Ruhr in the nineteenth century and its development into the largest conurbation in Europe. In the process the River Emscher in the northern part of the Ruhr valley was transformed from a naturally flowing river into a canalised open sewer. Altering the Emscher over a length of more than 80 km is intended to create a New Emscher valley and a river once more.

Altering the Emscher system and developing the New Emscher valley are projects that will take generations to complete and include many milestones. The Emscher is to develop into a continuous living waterway environment and a biotope link of major significance for the region.

The Emscher Future master plan defines the vision for this urban and landscape development. As an adaptable, flexible and responsive planning platform it serves to promote dialogue between everyone concerned, arriving at a consensus and providing an impulse for new projects.

The foundations were laid in an interdisciplinary competition in 2003. The winning entry saw the New Emscher as a length of coloured cable, providing an impulse for regional development. Blue stands for waterway development and green for the roads and routes that accompany it, for the upgrading of open spaces and the perimeters of housing developments along the Emscher. The red cables extend far into the region linking previously isolated areas with each other.

Altering the river will turn the New Emscher into a physical link and a carrier and conveyor of identity for an entire region. It will show what additional opportunities are opened up for the future by turning it into an attractive river with the vision of a New Emscher valley.

Architects:
ASTOC GmbH und Co. KG Architects & Planners, Köln
www.astoc.de

Environmental and landscape planning:
RMP Stephan Lenzen Landschaftsarchitekten, Bonn
www.rmp-landschaftsarchitekten.de

Waterways development:
Landschaft planen und bauen GmbH, Berlin
www.lpb-berlin.de

Norbert Post / Hartmund Welters Architekten & Stadtplaner BDA/SRL, Dortmund
www.post-welters.de

Client:
EMSCHERGENOSSENSCHAFT, Essen

ENERGIEBUNKER – A MONUMENT TO POWER AN ENTIRE DISTRICT
Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, 2009 - 2012

For over 60 years a World War II bunker has stood as a memorial in the middle of a residential area since its interior was totally destroyed by detonations in 1947. The concrete colossus is now to become the symbol of a climate-neutral city district.

Once the former anti-aircraft bunker has been converted into an energy bunker it will supply over 800 flats in the neighbouring Weltquartier (World Quarter), another Internationale Bauausstellung Hamburg (Hamburg International building Exhibition) project, with renewable heating and at the same time meet a part of the project’s electricity needs. The three core elements of the energy concept are a solar power plant on the roof and south-facing façade of the bunker, a combined heat and power plant powered by biomass and an 8,000 cubic metre water reservoir. Plans to expand the project have also been drawn up. Process heat and residual vegetable material from a nearby industrial enterprise are to be harnessed so that a large part of the surrounding district can be supplied with carbon dioxide-efficient heating and electricity.

At the same time the energy bunker is to be opened up to the neighbourhood after restoration to give people an opportunity to look from a terrace and a café in one of the former flak towers right across the Port of Hamburg and the city centre. An exhibition will also provide information about the war history of the bunker and the history of the Wilhelmsburg district.

The energy bunker, while continuing to be a memorial to ruinous destruction, will also come to symbolise a new and responsible way to deal with our planet’s resources.


Architects:
Feasibility study: HHS Planer + Architekten AG, Kassel
www.hhs-architekten.de

Demolition and repair survey:
Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Peter Bartram und Partner, Fischerhude
www.bartram.de

Energy concept:
Steinbeis-Transferzentrum Energie-, Gebäude- und Solartechnik (STZ-EGS), Stuttgart
www.stw.de

Storage concept:
Ingenieurbüro Lichtenfels, Keltern

CHP deployment and use:
sumbi INGENIEURE, Hamburg
www.sumbi.de

Client:
Internationale Bauausstellung IBA Hamburg GmbH, Hamburg

FÜRST-PÜCKLER-LAND – FROM AN INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE TO A LEISURE LANDSCAPE
Brandenburg, 2000 - 2010

From 2000 until 2010 the Lausitz brown coal mining area is the venue of Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) (International Building Exhibition) Fürst-Pückler-Land. With its 27 projects this IBA demonstrates how IBAs Germany can provide the economic, design and ecological impulse for the structural change that is needed in an erstwhile industrial and mining region.

This IBA’s focus is on reclaiming the landscape. An area that used to be East Germany’s energy centre is now Europe’s largest landscape construction site. This is where mountains are moved and new lakes are laid out. Part of this transformation process is to find new uses for industrial buildings, mining equipment, housing estates and extensive industrial sites.

The man whose name the IBA bears and who can be said to have inspired it is Prince Hermann von Pu_ckler-Muskau. In the nineteenth century he created greatly admired masterpieces of landscape gardening on his estates in Bad Muskau and Branitz, and they are held in high esteem all over the world to this day. IBA Fu_rst-Pu_ckler-Land links innovations in design and technology, confronts science and art with this task and attracts international attention to the region, thereby creating regional economic cycles and new jobs.

The former brown coal mining area is being transformed into the Lausitz lakeland – a new water tourism region with major potential for the future that is changing the character of the Lausitz from a mining area to a recreational landscape.

IBA Fürst-Pückler-Land is an example of the enormous innovative power of IBAs to drive urban and regional development in Germany.


Architects:
Landmark: Architektur & Landschaft Susanne Gabriel und Stefan Giers, München
www.architekturundlandschaft.de

Floating architecture:
kern und repper architekten partnerschaft blauwerk, Munich
www.dasblauwerk.de

Floating footbridge:
sinai. Faust. Schroll. Schwarz. Freiraumplanung + Projektsteuerung
GmbH, Berlin
www.sinai.de

Client:
Municipality of Senftenberg, IBA Fürst-Pückler-Land, Großräschen

SUSTAINABLE HEAD OFFICE – AN OFFICE BUILDING OPENS UP TO THE CITY
Hamburg, 2009

Hamburg is a city defined by water. Europe’s largest urban development area, Hamburg’s HafenCity, is taking shape on former port land. Flood protection and climate protection are elementary concerns of both private and public constructors. Unilever’s new German head office is an example of a pioneering sustainable urban development which offers its 1,200 employees desirable workplaces with views of the River Elbe and the Port of Hamburg.

The seven-storey newly constructed building was designed as an open office landscape. Its
centre is an extensive light-flooded atrium that plays an important role both for internal communication and for the building’s innovative energy concept. The ground floor is open to the general public, thereby establishing a connection with the surrounding urban space. Exhibition rooms, a café and a spa area invite people to walk around, spend time there and even let themselves be pampered.

The unique, state-of-the-art building fulfils the most exacting ecological requirements and achieved the gold standard of the HafenCity environmental award. It is the world’s first building with nothing but energy-saving LED lighting. It demonstrates its pioneering role by other innovative aspects such as its use of geothermal energy as well as its single-layer membrane façade which protects the external sunscreen from strong winds. Annual consumption of primary energy is said to be less than 100 kilowatt-hours per square metre.

Until a few years ago the site of the new Unilever building was a part of Hamburg’s free port and therefore not accessible to the general public. Today it is a light-filled and lively area and an urbane showpiece project for the conscientious use of resources.


Architects:
BEHNISCH ARCHITEKTEN, Stuttgart
www.behnisch.com

Client:
HOCHTIEF Projektentwicklung GmbH

SOLAR DECATHLON – THE HOME AS A POWER STATION »PROTOTYPE HOME 2015«
Darmstadt, 2007

Solar Decathlon is an international competition organised by the US Department of Energy. The task was to design an energy-efficient home for living in 2015. In 2007, 20 teams of students from the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Spain and Germany were invited to enter and compete against each other in Washington, D.C. Students from Darmstadt University of Technology made up the German team that won first prize.

The competition was to design the most attractive, effective and future-proof house. It had to be a completely energy-efficient building that would generate all of its energy using solar panels. Maximum floor space was not allowed to exceed 75 square metres. The resulting 20 highly compact homes were rated using 10 different disciplines.

The German team’s prototype home was intended to prove that maximum energy efficiency could be reconciled with aesthetics and comfortable living. Mainly using technology made in Germany and German manufacturers, it demonstrated the German approach. The house was full of new technology and concepts that ensured energy autonomy. These included solar power units built into the exterior walls and the roof, vacuum insulation and thermoactive component systems with phase change materials. The design, a modern timber construction using solid wood, demonstrated the performance and innovativeness of renewable timber materials.

The winning German team consisted of 25 architecture students at Darmstadt University of Technology. They competed again in 2009 to defend their title.


Project planning:
Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Design and Energy-Efficient Building
– Team Germany, Darmstadt, Director: Professor Manfred Hegger
www.ee.architektur.tu-darmstadt.de

Organised by:
U.S. Department of Energy, Washington D.C. (USA)
www.solardecathlon.de
www.solardecathlon2009.de

WOODEN HIGH BUILDING E3 – CLIMATE-CONSCIOUS AND SUSTAINABLE
Berlin, 2008

The space between buildings has enormous urban potential – not only for new housing but also for innovative and ecological construction. This point was underscored by the Berlin architects Kaden Klingbeil, who designed the first sevenstorey wooden building in the centre of a major European city. A project planned as a prototype for an innovative approach to urban development and construction, it optimally combines attractive architecture, minimal environmental burden and sustainability.

If Berlin’s building regulations were applied to the letter, the new building – Haus e3 – would be unlikely to exist. But in 2006 six families contacted the architects, enquiring whether planning permission could be obtained for a seven-storey wooden structure in a gap between existing buildings in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, and whether building it would be physically possible. The team of architects, who are experienced in designing wooden buildings, not only took on the assignment but also soon joined the group who wanted to build the block. Bit by bit, they enlisted more and more support – from the fire brigade, politicians and the media. Surveys revealed that safety regulations could be complied with and the impossible became
possible.

Wood is a renewable commodity and was used almost exclusively as the building material for this building. For that reason alone it is an exemplary building as far as energy efficiency is concerned. Its primary outlay for the shell was a mere 30 % of the cost of using conventional solid structure construction methods. The outstanding insulation qualities of wood, along with external insulation, have resulted in a very low annual energy requirement of well below 40 kilowatt-hours per square metre.

Haus e3 is proof that with diligence and perseverance entrenched ways of thinking can be overcome.

Architects:
KADEN KLINGBEIL, Berlin
www.kaden-klingbeil.de

Client:
e3Bau GbR, Berlin
www.e3-berlin.de

Germany boasts a number of outstanding pioneers of ecological construction and sustainable architecture, and Werner Sobek is one of them. He is an engineer and an architect, director of the renowned Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK) at the University of Stuttgart and, as of 2008, Mies van der Rohe Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Almost ten years ago Werner Sobek demonstrated with the house that was to become his home, the R128 project in Stuttgart, the shape that construction was likely to take in the future.

Sobek now travels all over the world. His architectural office has branches in Dubai, Moscow, Cairo and New York. His name stands for engineering, design and sustainability. He demonstrated in 2001 with his R128 project that his Triple Zero construction principles – no waste, no carbon dioxide and no energy – work. It was designed as a fully recyclable, zero emission, zero heating energy building.

Since 2008 Werner Sobek has been President of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), in which capacity he was involved in the development of the DGNB seal of quality, a German certification system. It is based on the lifecycle principle and includes, in addition to the ecological aspects of »green building«, economic and socio-cultural aspects, thereby integrating all three pillars of sustainability in equal measure.

In 2009 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in engineering by the Dresden University of Technology in recognition of his services to the development of modern architecture, with special reference to creative collaboration of architects and engineers, and his commitment to a new way of thinking in the field of construction for the future.


Ideas and designs:
rof. Dr.-Ing. Dr.-Ing. E.h. Werner Sobek, Stuttgart; Werner Sobek Stuttgart GmbH & Co. KG; Werner Sobek Design GmbH & Co. KG, WS Green Technologies GmbH; President of the German Society for Sustainable Construction (DGNB); Professor at the Stuttgart University of Technology and the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago (USA)
www.wernersobek.com

Tropical Forest 10° 35’ 20,37’’ S / 63° 36’ 50,50’’ W
Folke KÖbberling / Martin Kaltwasser
300 x 200 cm, finds of tropical wood, 2007

Using their installation »Tropical Forest 10° 35‘ 20.37“ S / 63° 36‘ 50.50“ W«
the artists Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser project images from the computer program Google Earth onto finds of tropical wood. The images are a satellite picture of rainforests in the southwest Brazilian state of Rondônia and provide a bird’s-eye view of the systematic destruction of the rainforests.

What can be recognised as rainforest when viewed from high above is the same thing that these artists have sawed from doors and walls. Timber consumption will continue to increase in the years ahead, destroying the last reserves of tropical rain forest. The threedimensional plan evokes images of the destruction of habitats and the uncritical consumption by the Western world. The fragile ecosystem can be destroyed at any moment.