Dy(e)ing Icons

Everybody now aims to avoid dirty new construction. But with ever growing populations, no construction means no demolition. Since urban models by the likes of Rossi, Lynch, Venturi + Scott Brown or Halbwachs etc do not include aspects of repurposing and refurbishing, we came up with our own.

These Icons represent the city internally, but do not receive the same acclaim as the main characters. Therefore, they are under constant political and economic pressure and must repeatedly prove themselves anew. Reports about their impending demolition flicker through the local press again and again - too cramped, too old, uneconomical or ramshackle. Yet it is precisely the character actors that make up the nature of a city. To defy both their demise, as well as urban standstill, our speed-dating mixes and matches these iconic but doomed places with program, that is much needed in the city. Out come three projects that are driven by the friction between form and use. They are lovable freaks who give the city much more than an ever increasing amount of faceless new sprawl. Inside a disused gasometer, a mineral spring bath merges with an exhibition hall, a concert Hall that has gotten to small for the stars turns into a university competence center for fiber materials and one of the city’s most hostile infrastructure nodes becomes an architecture centre.