Jonathan Heid’s master’s thesis ‘Building Consciousness – A Centre for the New European Bauhaus’, with its complex of topics and choice of location, is directly related to the ongoing climate change and the simultaneous above-average consumption of finite resources. As a test laboratory for practical applications and as a location for scientific investigations, Heid has chosen four buildings on KIT’s South Campus that have been vacant for several years due to high levels of pollution and can be used as examples. The building complex he selected is a cityscape-defining ensemble in the immediate vicinity of Karlsruhe Palace. The work is characterised by a high level of expertise in the application of refurbishment and circulation strategies for the building ensemble and transfers these skills equally to the potential for redensification and the architectural appearance of the interior and exterior of the refurbished research buildings.
The work was supervised by Prof Ludwig Wappner and Prof Dirk Hebel.
Alexander Rapp
Appreciation Student Award
The master’s thesis ‘Region. Architecture. Identity _ Structural Development through Architectural Intervention’ by Alexander Rapp deals with the well-known phenomenon of structural change in rural regions in a very subtle and pointed manner in its theoretical and practical elaboration. He chooses the small Saxon town of Glashütte in the Ore Mountains as an example. The town’s demonstrable population decline, the vacancy rate and need for refurbishment of its existing buildings and its still existing tradition of watchmaking provided a suitable starting point for reviving the tradition of an old craft tradition in connection with a new watchmaking school and training workshops in addition to social changes by means of architectural interventions. This new anchor point, which is close at hand for the region and creates a sense of identity, offers not only an urban redevelopment of the city centre but also the opportunity to anchor the watchmaking trade and watch manufacturers more firmly in the consciousness of the region and beyond by means of expressive architecture.
The project was supervised by Prof Ludwig Wappner and Prof Riklef Rambow.
Silvi Kociu
Prize winner Student Award
Silvi Kociu received the main prize of 2,000 euros for her master’s thesis ‘Sand dumping in Hamburg’s Spree harbour’.
In her work, Silvi Kociu shows how the maintenance work in Hamburg’s shipping canals can be used to create a new landscape for animals and plants. She uses the sand dredged from the canals to maintain navigation to create a cohabitative ecosystem consisting of a habitat for animals and a natural leisure pool.
The work skilfully spans a wide cultural arc from the beginnings of land occupation by humans to the withdrawal of humans from strategically selected areas called for by Kociu. The architectural objects she proposes are variations on typical harbour infrastructures such as crane runways and conveyor belts.
The work was supervised by Prof Simon Hartmann and Prof Christian Inderbitzin.
Teresa Galí-Izard
Teresa Gali-Izard
Nominated
The Catalan architect Teresa Galí-Izard is nominated for the Schelling Architecture Award 2024. She sees her task as a landscape architect as influencing how people connect with living systems.
The systemic nature of the projects that transform the logic of nature has many layers and scales. Teresa Galí-Izard is familiar with the language and behaviour of water, vegetation, soils, tree architecture and plant life cycles. At the same time, she knows how to identify parameters that intervene in rule-based systems, including infrastructures, management, urban metabolism, temporality and seasonality.
Her Chair of Being Alive at ETH Zurich is a kind of statement through its substantial name alone and deals in the truest sense with life cycles, living beings and the landscape as a basis for life to be rethought.
Bas Smets, a landscape architect with an office in Brussels, is nominated for the Schelling Architecture Award 2024. He is a seeker of an understanding of the city based on ecology. Smets, who trained in Leuven and Geneva and then worked with Michel Desvigne in Paris, pursues a new understanding of landscape planning in his work.
According to Smets, many things need to be rethought. Landscape planning can play a pioneering role. Smets’ aim is to generate spaces in local urban environments that can be used for longer periods of the year in terms of climate and that are at the same time more resident-friendly.
How closely will landscape planning and urban development have to cooperate in future? Bas Smets believes in the need for
‘biospheric urbanism’. Smets has shown how this can be realised in Arles in the area surrounding Frank Gehry’s Luma Museum.
