R+EVUE 20%

Organizational and administrative activities have shed their typological corset. Having cut spatial ties to the office, they are now at home almost anywhere.

According to current studies, around 20% of office space in Germany will be obsolete in the medium term . This corresponds to a floor area of more than 75 million square meters. Calculated against the average per capita living space of 47,7 sqm , this represents enough space to house almost 2 million people.

This equation is grossly simplified. It is problematic for, amongst other reasons, its exclusion of variables such as a building’s structural character, its urban location, and its proximity to technical and social infrastructures.

The current demand for living space - especially in metropolitan areas - and the simultaneous necessity to establish more sustainable architectural practices, makes the conversion of existing buildings inevitable. This brings the above-mentioned issues to the fore, and will require the analysis of these buildings’ potentials and the architectural tools for exploiting them.

R+EVUE 2 presents ten case studies, each making use of the same already-vacant office structure: an administrative building from the 1970s in Hamburg Wansbek. ... mehrThe object under investigation serves as a stand-in for the office buildings which pervade the peripheries of large German cities. Through consideration of this building’s specific structural and urban characteristics, various strategies for reappropriation are examined.

The studies were produced systematically: the same office structure superimposed with ten residential projects, selected to form a broad typological spectrum. The frictions and conflicts which arise during this overlay process become catalysts for specific design solutions and raise more general questions about the reappropriation of existing structures. By adapting the characteristic typological features of the residential buildings to the structure of the office building, new and unexpected approaches are generated.

The depth and extent of each study’s intervention is measurable against the existing structure. In the form of red-yellow plans and visualizations, both demolition measures and structural additions are clearly illustrated.
The excerpt from the portfolio of office buildings is contrasted with a selection of residential building references.

The ten residential building references cover a wide range of different circulation typologies, apartment types, construction principles and scales.

The different housing references are all projected onto the structure of one vacant office building. Because its concrete skeleton is typical for an entire generation of commercial structures, the findings of the housing projections resonate beyond this specific case study.