The Bridges of Radolfzell

The train station in Radolfzell am Bodensee: What once prospered now lies fallow. Due to the demolition of industrial facilities, the 5.50-hectare area is now largely a gravel surface used for parking and construction material storage. It stretches over more than a kilometer, acting as an urban gap between the city and Lake Constance. The underpass at the station is the only central connection. Therefore the project searches for architecturally applicable principles and potentials within a process of “learning from” suburban periphery, to rethink and reshape the existing void into a new link.

The foundation of this work is the recognition of suburban spaces, such as the train station area in Radolfzell, as a distinct form of urbanity. Instead of delineating the various forms of the city against each other, the industrial island as an intermediate space assumes the urban, public, cultural, social, and ecological task of creating transitions between the different urban areas or green spaces - particularly in terms of interconnectedness, the quality of public spaces, and potential for appropriation and identification. Following a contextual and historical analysis of the site, the architectural part proceeds on two different scales. At the first scale “Reshaping”, an alternating building plot-open space-structure is developed as an overarching strategy that includes the entire train station area. The structure aims to transfer building density and urban graining as the morphological character of the existing industrial area to the fallow land and thereby, creates also spaces for the development of high-quality public areas. The second scale is “The Bridges of Radolfzell”. They overlay the structure, occupy building plots, and inscribe a new layer into the urban palimpsest. Seven bridges, each with an architectural character precisely related to its context, define a public network of paths, enriched with partly existing polyvalent everyday places for meeting in leisure time, for sports, gastronomy, culture and art, and for mobility. The bridges not only connect various urban and green spaces with the promenade along the lake but also break up the long sequence of building plots and open spaces into smaller segments that can flexibly be developed between the bridges. What lies fallow begins to live again as a reconnecting part of the city.