IBA Thüringen

Nordhausen-Nord, with some 2,000 residents, is one of the town’s most popular residential districts. The proportion of older people is above average, and the majority of the prefab housing blocks are partially renovated.

To improve quality of life for the inhabitants and to make it attractive to a broader spectrum of residents, Nordhausen council and the SWG municipal housing association are planning the sustainable revitalisation of the quarter. To this end, a team of architects and landscape architects have developed a neighbourhood concept that considers the themes of housing, mobility, open space, energy, water as well as social aspects at a neighbourhood level. Best practice standards for the environmentally-conscious design of different kinds of residential courtyards, and new models for the design of communal open space aim to create a range of more individual environments for both existing and new residents. An architectural competition in 2019 for the model conversion of an ensemble of prefab housing blocks and its courtyard transformed the monotonous backdrop of the mass housing blocks into three ‘mult-italented blocks’: Sophie, Ludwig and Franzi. The design proposes a variety of moderate structural interventions, ranging from small modi cations to the ground plan to provide barrier-free access and improve living conditions, to communal terraces and garden areas.

The sustainable and resource-conscious approach to revitalising the quality of life in a mass-housing estate promises to be a pioneering pilot project that can serve as a model for other similar residential environments. 

Just around the corner from Georg Muche’s seminal ‘Haus am Horn’ from 1923 is the urban development area ‘Neues Bauen am Horn’. The Studierendenwerk Thüringen (the Thuringian Student Union) owns the last remaining plot on the site and is developing a new hall of residence for students together with the Stiftung Baukultur and the IBA Thüringen. In 2017, the Munich-based architects Almannai und Fischer won an international architectural competition organised to find original ideas for student housing. Their concept refrains from the typical anonymous repetition of small apartments, proposing instead a mix of spacious communal areas and small private spaces for the students’ personal use.

Many rural areas are mix of catalogue homes and DIY flair. Between them, however, there are people who strive to live and build sustainably – a particularly welcome development in the current climate, where an awareness of context and landscape and of regional skills and materials is more important than ever.

The architecture office of Gründer Kirfel in Bedheim is part of a growing scene of rural architects who are again turning to the practice of self-building. As the owners of Bedheim Castle, a former manor estate, they can look back on a rich cultural heritage – a heritage that requires corresponding management and care, both architecturally and economically. Their response was to build simple, good-quality architecture using regional materials. The 20-person strong community at Bedheim Castle is especially committed to the rural environment at a practical, intellectual, communal and individual level. Their focus is on cultivating quality of life in the countryside, developing the cultural landscape and promoting building culture in rural areas. The Sh/leep barn, a self-built guesthouse on the site of a former barn on the castle grounds is a prime example.

The guiding principle was to realise the building as a self-build project. The initiative became an IBA project in 2017 and gained funding as a ‘model project for regional development’ from the Thuringian Ministry of Infrastructure. The many helpers included carpenters on the tramp, a master roofer and the building workshop at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.

The simple timber-frame structure unites analogue craftsmanship with standardised materials and regular timber connections from the hardware store. Construction began in 2017 and four weeks later, thanks to the skilled carpenters, the topping out ceremony was held to mark completion of the frame structure.

The Sh/leep barn opened in 2018 and contains bedrooms and a dormitory, toilets and washing facilities, a kitchen and dining room, as well as storage for heating fuel. The barn is already much in demand and has gained recognition in the architectural press, including being shortlisted for the German Architecture Museum’s DAM 2020 prize.