Houses For Animals

This project is primarily not about architecture. It is about taking a position. It wants to be understood as a proclamation for modesty, a promotion of building in context (Bauen im Bestand).

Modern agriculture must become a greater issue of today’s social debate. The ongoing intensification results in severe problems for animal welfare, environmental protection and social structures. The full orientation for profit by the consumers and the wholesalers leads to a price battle at the end of which the animals and the farmer are.\nSo a rethinking must take place. Technology brought new media that is global and accessible for almost everybody. We are more and more connected. Furthermore there are some serious crisis that may change our planet dramatically. Ecological and social ones. And because of that there must be a greater awareness of the consequences for others who are also participating in the same system. The awareness that every single act is going to have an influence to the whole system. Practically this applies to the farmers who is obliged to care about the animals and the environment. But this especially applies to the architect who must see himself today as a kind of mentor for every building issue. Since he is in charge of the design he must assume the responsibility and find at best an ego-less solution everyone involved can go with. This also means that the question has to be raised how this architecture should look like. We think that in our times architecture must not be an end in itself. It must be a tool for improving its environment. This context-bound approach is for us the will to interact with the existing as much as possible, to attribute an immanent value to the context. For us this is summed up with the term of “Bauen im Bestand” (Building in context).\nIn this project we tried to implement this thoughts by intervening in a minimal way. We wanted the farm to keep not only one type of animal but many in a very extensive form with direct processing and sale. So because of this new functions new room was needed. We decided to exclusively use the vacant buildings on the farm. Thus no buildings have to be newly built. The old sheds and houses were transformed so that they correspond to our ideas of animal farming and ecology.