Projektbeschreibung
In the late 2000s, grid, typology and pattern re-entered architectural discourse in the context of digitalisation, echoing their role in 1960s–70s structuralism. Journals such as arch+ and Tomáš Valena’s symposium ‘Structuralism in Architecture & Urbanism Reloaded’ revisited open building, morphological systems and generative methods—now deemed feasible with information technology. Protagonists included SANAA, OMA/AMO, Sou Fujimoto, Lacaton & Vassal and a ‘new structuralist’ generation with offices such as Bruther, Studio Muoto, Experience - Eric Lapierre.
This studio traces that lineage specifically in Paris, examining how Lacaton & Vassal, Bruther, Studio Muoto, Eric Lapierre, Chartier Dalix and others blur public and private realms through passages that ‘turn streets into interiors’ (Walter Benjamin). It recalls the motifs of Aldo van Eyck and Herman Hertzberger, who used thresholds to compose spatial sequences fostering movement and encounter.
Insights from Paris inform a design for the Bahnhofsquartier in Braunschweig: a hybrid structure above the tram loop, adjacent to the railway and bus station. Its programme integrates infrastructure, housing (including serviced apartments), workplaces, parking and public amenities. Rather than let programme dictate form, we seek a lasting spatial and constructive order—a ‘golden’ grid that accommodates diverse dimensions, spans and circulation patterns by negotiating efficiency with generosity, repetition with exception, permanence with change.
Three themes guide the designprocess:
- The Public Interior: an interior urban realm of streets, passages, halls and collective spaces extending the city inwards
- The Constructive Knot: where structure, circulation, façade and programme intersect, transforming the generic grid into specific architecture
- The Articulation: the use of repetition, variation and structural expression to generate scale, identity and character
At block scale, the project proposes ‘street architecture’: façades and entrances, that make a strong street front and mediate between the vastness of the hybrid and the intimacy of the street through rhythm, depth, hierarchy and articulation. A rich public programme at its core acts as an urban catalyst, deliberately blurring the boundary between inside and outside.
Ultimately, the studio investigates whether the grand urban building can become a resilient framework for collective life—a robust, adaptable type capable of giving lasting form and character to the city.