A lightweight university study centre, designed to be easily dismantled, has won the award for Europe’s best building. Longevity, a sense of permanence and immutability may be the ambition of most architects, but Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke would be pleased to see their buildings adapted and reconfigured, or eventually dismantled and moved elsewhere entirely.
“We imagined the project as a switchable system,” says Düsing, co-designer of the new work pavilion at the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany, winner of this year’s AB Mies prize (formerly Mies van der Rohe). award), the biennial European Union award for contemporary architecture. “We wanted it to be a counterpoint to the university’s high-rise building and traditional one-sided lecture halls. “It’s more like an extension of the landscape that can be changed forever, a non-hierarchical space that students can make their own.”
Standing as an elegant white steel and glass pavilion nestled among the trees on the edge of the university campus, the building hosts an open-plan arrangement of flexible workspaces on two levels. From the outside it looks incredibly thin; A thin outline of a building consisting of a rectangular frame of toothpick-thin columns and beams. Inside, it opens as a three-dimensional learning environment, a modular framework that invites different layouts. Thick yellow curtains can be drawn to block off certain areas, creating private tutoring rooms and quiet learning spaces; Furniture can also be moved outside to balconies during warmer months, providing open-air workspaces protected by a deep overhanging roof. Shades the interior in summer.
Architects have designed projects in the 1960s, including Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, a flexible “street university” once dreamed up for London, and Yona Friedman’s Ville Spatiale, a fantastical concept for a multi-layered, city-sized grid. They say they were inspired by the radical superstructures of the . This is constantly adaptable. None of this materialized, but some of their modular ambitions survive in Braunschweig’s 3 x 3 meter space frame.
Although the ground floor is completely open plan, the architects designed the first floor as a series of “islands” connected by bridges, creating separate workspaces between double-height high volumes. Some are central to everything and overlook the action below, while others are more remote and reserved, with tables on the edges almost feeling like they’re suspended in the trees. The stairs connect the different spaces inside and outside, giving the feeling of being in a kind of climbing learning framework. “It’s a bit like building a nest,” says Düsing. “You offer a space that is very complex and has many different features, then students can come and find their place.”
The architects describe the building as acting like a microchip on a circuit board, a central meeting point connecting all parts of the university campus. It has no front or back, but there are nine equal entrances throughout the 1,000 square meters (10,760 sq ft) building, making it feel like an open centre, accessible from all directions, even from the footpath along the nearby river. the public too. The students have already taken to the structure and started adding their own interventions: On the architects’ last visit, they saw someone even hanging a hammock from the steel frame. “It should feel like an extension of the living room,” Hacke says. “They come here to eat, play cards and work.”
From a technical perspective, the most important innovation of the building is in its structural system. Inspired by Märklin construction sets (the German equivalent of Meccano), this set is made from a kit of easily disassembled prefabricated parts. In keeping with a broader movement towards circular construction, everything is connected with bolts or screws rather than welding or gluing, allowing entire building components to be reused. The slim frame is made of hollow steel sections only 10 cm (4 in) wide and also contains electrical wiring, lighting and sockets, as well as housing drain pipes; thus eliminating the need for suspended ceilings and raised floors. where such services are usually hosted.
The floors are made from prefabricated wooden cassettes fitted into place, while the ceilings are lined with perforated acoustic panels, which, together with curtains and carpeted floors, create a remarkably quiet environment. “This is a model against being in the library,” says Düsing. “There’s a background buzz, but it’s never overwhelming.”
The jury praised the rigor and precision of the project, chosen from a long list of 40 buildings from across Europe, commenting on how the project “takes a clear architectural idea, examines it and pushes it to its limits”. They added that it is more than just a building, it “can be understood as a versatile system combining technological inventions with a flexible and reusable principle.”
The project was widely recognized in Germany, winning the national architecture award from the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and was praised by a newspaper critic as “what the future of German construction might look like”. At a time when resources were scarce, it was praised for being as lean and economical as possible: everything was pared down to the bare minimum, focusing on the essentials to fit into the total budget of €5.2 million (£4.47 million). (3.2 million euros for construction).
The project is even more impressive because it is the architects’ first building. Düsing, 40, and Hacke, 38, entered the competition in 2015, just a few years after graduating from the London Architectural Association, where they met as students. They now both have independent offices in Berlin, but they come together to collaborate with others when needs arise. “It’s a survival strategy,” Hacke says of their loose network of seven people. “When we need a larger workforce, we can work together and then go back to our smaller structures.” It is an agile application model that is as agile, efficient and adaptable as the building itself.
The last winner of the AB Mies award in 2022 was a similarly open-plan and adaptable building for Kingston University, the majestic Townhouse designed by Grafton Architects. Previous winners in the UK included Stansted Airport in 1990 and Waterloo Station in 1994, but there will be no more: since Brexit British buildings are no longer eligible for the €60,000 EU prize.