by A lightweight university study center designed to be easily dismantled has won the prize for the best building in Europe. Longevity, permanence and a sense of impermanence might be the ambition of most architects, but Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke would have relished adapting and reconfiguring their buildings, or finally dismantling and moving somewhere else entirely.
“We imagined the project as a changeable system,” says Düsing, co-designer of the new study pavilion for the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, which has been named this year’s winner of the EU Mies (formerly Mies van der Rohe) award. . award), the European Union’s biennial prize for contemporary architecture. “We wanted it to be a model for the tall university building and the traditional one-sided lecture halls. It’s more like an extension of the landscape that can be modified forever, a non-hierarchical space that the students can make their own.”
Standing as an elegant white steel and glass pavilion, set amongst the trees on the edge of the university campus, the building features an open plan arrangement of flexible study spaces over two levels. From the outside, it seems impossibly slim, a thin sketch of a building formed by a rectangular framework of toothpick-thin columns and beams. Inside, it opens as a three-dimensional learning landscape, a modular frame that invites different types of habitation. Thick yellow curtains can be drawn to close off certain areas, creating ad hoc lecture rooms and quiet teaching spaces, and the furniture can be moved outside to the balconies in the warmer months, providing deep roofed outdoor study areas hung on them – something too. shades the interior in the summer.
The architects say they were inspired by the radical superstructure of the 1960s, including Cedric Price’s Fun Palace – a flexible “university on the streets” once envisioned for London – and Yona Friedman’s Ville Spatiale – a brilliant concept for a multi-layered city grid . which could always be adapted. Neither of these came to fruition, but part of their modular ambition lives on in Braunschweig’s 3 x 3 meter spaceframe.
While the ground floor is completely open plan, the architects designed the first floor as a series of “islands” connected by bridges, creating separate study zones between high double-height volumes. Some are in the heart of life, overlooking the action below, others are more removed and withdrawn, and desks around the edge seem almost suspended in the trees. Stairs connect the different areas, inside and outside, giving the impression that you are inside a kind of climbing learning frame. “It’s a bit like nesting,” says Düsing. “You provide a very complex space with many different characteristics, then students can come in and find their place.”
The architects describe the building as a microchip on a circuit board, a central meeting point connected to all parts of the university campus. There is no front or back, but nine identical entrances throughout the 1,000 square meter (10,760 square foot) building, making it feel like an open hub, accessible from all directions – even from the footpath along the nearby river , welcome members of. the community, too. The students have already accepted the structure and started to add their own interventions: on the architects’ last visit, they discovered that someone had even removed a hammock from the steel frame. “It should feel like an extension of the living room,” says Hacke. “They come here to eat and play cards, as well as work.”
From a technical point of view, the main innovation of the building is its structural system. Inspired by Märklin construction sets (the German equivalent of Meccano), it is built from a prefabricated kit of parts that can be easily taken apart. Everything is bolted or screwed together, rather than welded or glued, in line with the wider movement towards circular construction, which allows for the reuse of entire building components. The slim frame is made from hollow steel sections that are only 10cm (4in) wide, and houses electrical wiring, lighting and plug sockets, as well as housing drainage pipes – eliminating the need for suspended ceilings and raised floors, where such services are normally accommodated.
The floors are made of prefabricated wooden cassettes, slotted into place, and the ceilings are covered with perforated acoustic panels which, together with the curtains and carpeted floors, create an extremely quiet environment. “Being in the library is a different model,” says Düsing. “There’s a background buzz, but it’s not overwhelming.”
The judges praised the rigor and precision of the project – selected from a long list of 40 buildings across Europe – commenting on “a clear architectural idea that it took, scrutinized and pushed to the limit”. More than a single building, they added, “it could be understood as a versatile system, blending technological inventions with a flexible and reusable principle.”
The project has already received wide recognition in Germany, winning the national architecture prize from the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, and was praised by one newspaper critic as “what the future of German construction could look like”. In a time of scarce resources, he was praised for being as lean and economical as possible: everything was stripped back to the minimum possible, according to the most essential features to fit within the overall budget of €5.2m (£4.47m). (€3.2m for construction).
The project is even more remarkable since it is the architects’ first building ever. Düsing, 40, and Hacke, 38, entered the competition in 2015, just a few years after graduating from the London Architectural Association, where they met as students. They now both have independent offices in Berlin, but come together to collaborate with others when needs arise. “It’s a survival strategy,” says Hacke, of his loose network of seven. “We can work together when we need a larger workforce, and then go back to our smaller structures.” It is a nimble model of practice that is as agile, efficient and adaptable as the building itself.
The final winner of the EU Mies award, in 2022, was a building with a similar open plan and adaptable to Kingston University, the palatial Townhouse designed by Grafton Architects. Previous UK winners include Stansted Airport in 1990 and Waterloo Station in 1994, but there will be no more: since Brexit, British buildings are no longer eligible for the €60,000 EU prize.
