FS 23/24
The starting point for our work at the Chair is the appreciation of the existing, which forms the foundation on which we can build in our work as architects. Our work is always in the context of a larger whole, so we see houses less as objects than as specific structures that are part of an organism, whether built or natural.
With this in mind, we would like to devote ourselves to Dresden in the design course we are offering to undergraduate students in the summer semester of 2024. A very special, fragmentary urban structure has emerged over the centuries, a heterogeneous structure that is formed from several eras: the baroque and Wilhelminian buildings, the buildings of the GDR modernism and buildings that have been built since the 1990s. We see potential in these fragments, they create places of change and situations such as wasteland, fire walls, disjointed open spaces and the proximity of industry and housing give us the opportunity to generate very specific spaces and qualities.
With our design, we would like to encourage you to look away from the Elbe panorama, consumption and reconstruction and focus on the outdoor areas, and in this context we would like to think together with you about vitalisation strategies as a sustainable measure for urban development.
We want to focus on this subject area, on buildings that create collective spaces, both inside and through the design of their exterior spaces. Buildings that experience their use through appropriation, that are changeable and have a strong physical identity.
We are interested in exploring existing situations that are given new value through change and undergo a transformation through sensitive additions. We ask you to think long-term in order to find an appropriate language through the structural expression and choice of materials that is both flexible and strong in expression and open to adaptation and appropriation. We are thinking of a mixture of small-scale public use together with collective forms of living and working that contribute to the identity of the neighbourhood and, together with the outdoor spaces, create a lively spatial structure.
The project will be worked on in groups of two, working in the drawing rooms in Bamberger Strasse is desired.
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