Prof. Ansgar Schulz and Prof. Benedikt Schulz, together with r + b landschaft s architektur from Dresden, win the competition for the extension of the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf. They were supported by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Beckh on the structure (Professorship for Structural Planning, Faculty of Architecture, TU Dresden), by Dr. Astrid Ziemann on urban climate (Professorship for Meteorology, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, TU Dresden) and from Prof. Thomas Auer on sustainability (LS Building Technology and Climate-Appropriate Construction, Faculty of Architecture, TU Munich).

The state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia was built from 1981 to 1988 based on a design by the architect Fritz Eller. The center of the building is the circular plenary hall, around which the conference rooms, committee rooms, offices of representatives, the state parliament administration and visitor rooms are grouped like a satellite. The original planning was based on three fractions and had to be expanded to four fractions during the construction phase. Today five parliamentary groups are doing their work in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia. The increasing number of parliamentary groups, the more complex issues of the specialist committees and the continuous expansion of the offers for citizens result in the extension of the state parliament building towards the Rhine tower. The work of the state parliament is to be brought together again in one place and the Bilk public park is to be upgraded to a green space with quality of stay and a networking function between the Rhine, the city center and the media harbor.

© Schulz und Schulz

The chairman of the jury, Prof. Jörg Aldinger, justified the award of Schulz and Schulz with the 1^st prize with the fact that “the authors have succeeded in continuing and reinterpreting the unmistakable location of the Rheinaue in Düsseldorf and the independent architecture of the state parliament. The design represents a wonderful symbiosis of the present and the future in urban development, landscape planning and architecture and will be best connected with the place and the people” (Landtag NRW 2020).

Further information here.