WINTER SEMESTER 19/20

To begin with, we will examine the North Campus site—its open spaces, vacant lots, nooks, and places to linger—as well as the existing master plan, which calls for new construction and the repurposing of existing buildings, specifically the industrial structures of the former Gottschalk & Co. company.

For the follow-up project, we have selected the currently unused former production hall, located directly next to the new ASL building, as the setting for our project.

The goal is to design a large-scale intervention—a vision for the site—developed from the interplay of existing potential, desired uses, and our own imagination.

The semester is structured like a play, divided into several acts that build upon one another and focus on a wide variety of aspects of the analysis and development of space and program.

The field trip/workshop week is part of the introductory studio and takes us to Leipzig’s “Garden of Eden.” Here we can sleep, cook, and be creative.

We’ll explore a broad spectrum of architectural typologies through selected examples and neighborhoods and engage with the city’s “genius loci.” On site, in addition to sightseeing, we’ll actively contribute “something” to urban life.

We encourage working “by any means necessary”—using algorithms and straws, analog and digitally fabricated models, images, drawings, films, sounds, and language. Design through “learning by doing.” Tools and methods are taught as part of the project work, but there are no set formulas. The design process and critical engagement with the topic are facilitated through continuous guidance of the students.

Intensity leaves its mark!

The documenta Institute in Kassel is still in the conceptual phase. We want to use this construction project—which is so exciting and important for Kassel’s identity—as an opportunity to develop visions for a public building that rethinks the relationship between architecture and nature. The centrally located Karlsplatz, currently the preferred site, is ideally suited to set a radical example that inspires a shift in thinking.

The first efforts to renaturalize the city of Kassel date back to the 1980s. At that time, Josef Beuys conceived the project “7,000 Oaks—Urban Reforestation Instead of Urban Administration” for documenta 7, which has since left a lasting mark on Kassel’s cityscape with its oak-lined avenues.

We want to go a step further and interweave trees and space (buildings). To replace the previous coexistence with a synergy.

Beuys viewed trees as sentient beings lacking rights: “They are disenfranchised. They know full well that they are disenfranchised. Animals, trees—everything is disenfranchised. I want to grant these trees and these animals legal standing.”

With this in mind, we will integrate trees as equal users alongside humans into the development of our building concepts. What synergies can arise from the presence and needs of these new “users”?

At the same time, the Kassel Art Academy is addressing, among other things, the question of what the documenta Institute, as a forward-looking institution, should achieve and what kind of space it needs to do so as part of a seminar. In joint meetings, we will exchange ideas on this topic and incorporate the resulting insights into our spatial program.

The goal is to develop spatial and programmatic visions for the documenta Institute that challenge and inspire, and serve as food for thought for further discussions.

In this advanced seminar, we will reexamine our relationship with the natural world around us: Using the tree—which, among other things, plays a vital role as an oxygen producer in reducing the dangerously rising CO2 levels in the Earth’s atmosphere—as an example, we will explore how trees can find a place in our building designs as “co-inhabitants.” Humans and trees as equal beings and users. Students will research the primary needs of trees and humans, as well as the synergies arising from their interactions, and develop forward-looking concepts for the resulting requirements on the physical environment and architectural design.

The insights and concepts gained in the advanced seminar will be tested in the summer semester of 2020 as part of the DR Profile Project using a hybrid building complex as a case study. The accompanying research seminar in the summer semester will focus, among other things, on the “narrative” of the profile project.

At the end of the seminar, the research findings and concepts will be compiled into a reader and a three-dimensional installation and presented during a guided tour.

In the spring semester of 2019, drawing on the expertise of Reinhard Lindner (Professor of Theory, Empirical Research, and Methods in Social Therapy at the University of Kassel) and Martin Ohlmeier (Director of the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Ludwig-Noll Hospital), we developed a prototype building that, through collaboration between the university (the departments of social work and psychology) and the field of psychiatry, provides additional spaces with diverse spatial qualities for interaction, gathering, and relaxing for students, patients, and everyone.

In the advanced seminar, we will further develop the existing designs in terms of both content and form. To this end, we will collaborate with students from Prof. Lindner’s class and form teams or “tandems.” Together, we will explore topics in greater depth, conduct research, redefine concepts, and translate them into design solutions—for example: What does supported living mean? How does counseling take place in a social-psychiatric context? What spatial conditions are required for counseling in social work? How can learning, counseling, and living take place together? … and how can these needs be realized spatially.

During the field trip week, the teams will visit relevant institutions in the Kassel area (dates will be agreed upon by the students among themselves).

After an introduction and round of self-introductions, the teams will work together in a coordinated manner and present their work at the end of the semester.

(ZOOM project/drawings and models, and term paper/theoretical paper) at the end of the semester.

The goal of this advanced seminar is to develop forward-looking visions that provide food for thought for further concepts bridging the gap between psychiatry and society—a “genius loci” for the diversity of the psyche.