NICHTS ZU VERLIEREN architectural tuesday TH Köln

In the organizer's words:

Demands for resource conservation and climate protection on the one hand, functionality and aesthetics on the other, but possibly also office management constraints, present architectural firms with major challenges when dealing with existing buildings. While issues of resource conservation speak in favor of preservation and conversion , defects in the building fabric, functional deficits, high conversion or refurbishment costs and aesthetic reservations on the part of many users and society as a whole tend to suggest demolition. So how do we deal with what is already there? Which commissions do, can, must or should architecture firms take on? What do we stand for?

HPP Architekten plays an interesting role in this debate: Not only as the creator of some of these endangered buildings does the office have a vital interest in their preservation. It is also committed to an appreciative approach to our building stock against the backdrop of resource conservation. On the other hand, the planners all too often experience the hurdles and obstacles that stand in the way of this goal in everyday life.

Many public buildings - such as the Engineering Science Center of Cologne University of Applied Sciences - are caught between preservation and renewal as well as between use and identity . One example of this is the debate surrounding the Cologne Justice Center from 1984, which was decided to be demolished and rebuilt in 2014. While HPP Architekten, after winning the competition organized by the Bau- und Liegenschaftsbetrieb NRW, dedicated themselves to planning the new construction of the Justice Center, the architecture studio Demo Working Group investigated possibilities for transforming the building. The resulting study shows an alternative to demolishing the Justice Center without fundamentally questioning the competition decision. The architects are convinced that both the realization of the new building and a meaningful transformation of the existing structure of the current Justice Center that would be freed up as a result are possible.

Together with Robert Bönsch from HPP Architekten, Thorsten Pofahl from the Demo Working Group and students from TH Köln, the following questions, among others, will be explored in this semester's contribution to architectural tuesday by the Resource-Optimized Building specialization:

What can we learn about the IWZ and the Deutz campus from the debate about the Justice Center ?

How can we architects bring together the different perspectives presented, both in the city and in university society?

What roles can, should and would we like to play in this discourse?

What forms of conversion and further construction can arise if the existing is not measured solely according to functional and aesthetic standards, but rather understood as a resource for future architecture?

Input lecture:
. Robert Bönsch, HPP Architects

Panel discussion:
. Thorsten Pofahl, Demo Working Group
. Prof. Thorsten Burgmer, TH Cologne
. plus students of the Master's specialization ROB Resource-Optimized Construction