A lightweight university study center designed to be easily dismantled has won the award for the best building in Europe. Longevity, sustainability and a sense of immutability may be the ambition of most architects, but Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke would love to see their building adapted and reconfigured, or eventually dismantled and moved elsewhere are moved.
“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 Prize (formerly the Mies van der Rohe award), the European Union’s biennial prize for contemporary architecture. “We wanted it to be a counter-model to the university high-rises and conventional, one-sided lecture halls. It is more of an extension of the landscape that can be changed forever, a non-hierarchical space that the students can make their own.”
The building stands as an elegant pavilion of white steel and glass, nestled among the trees on the edge of the university campus, and houses an open arrangement of flexible study spaces spread over two levels. From the outside it seems impossibly sleek, a thin outline of a building formed by a rectangular framework of toothpick-thin columns and beams. Inside, it opens up as a three-dimensional learning landscape, a modular frame that invites different forms of living. Thick yellow curtains can be drawn to close off certain areas, creating ad hoc lecture halls and quiet teaching areas, while in the warmer months the furniture can be moved outside to balconies, creating outdoor study areas, sheltered by a deep overhanging roof – which the interior also provides shade in the summer.
The architects say they were inspired by the radical superstructures of the 1960s, including Cedric Price’s Fun Palace – a flexible ‘a university of the streets’ once conceived for London – and Yona Friedman’s Ville Spatiale – a fantastic concept for a multi-level city grid. that could be continuously adjusted. Neither came to fruition, but part of their modular ambition lives on in Braunschweig’s 3 x 3 meter space frame.
While the ground floor has a completely open plan layout, the architects designed the first floor as a series of ‘islands’ connected by bridges, creating separate study zones between tall, double-height volumes. Some are in the center of everything and overlook the action below, others are more removed and withdrawn, while desks on the edge almost hang into the trees. Stairs connect the different spaces, inside and outside, creating the feeling that you are in a kind of climbing frame of learning. “It’s a bit like nesting,” says Düsing. “You offer a space that is very complex and has many different qualities, then students can come in and find their place.”
The architects describe the building as a microchip on a printed circuit board, a central meeting point connected to all parts of the university campus. There is no front or back, but nine equal entrances surrounding the 1,000 square meter building, making it feel like an open hub, accessible from all directions – even from the footpath along the nearby river, welcome to members of the public too. The students have already taken over the structure and started adding their own interventions: on the architects’ last visit, they discovered that someone had even hung 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, but also to work.”
From a technical perspective, the building’s main innovation lies in its structural system. Inspired by Märklin construction sets (the German equivalent of Meccano), it is constructed from a prefabricated kit with parts that can be easily taken apart. Everything is bolted or bolted together, rather than welded or glued, in line with the wider movement towards circular construction, allowing entire building components to be reused. The slim frame is made from hollow steel profiles that are just 10cm wide and which also house the electrical wiring, lighting and sockets, as well as drain pipes – eliminating the need for suspended ceilings and raised floors. where such services are normally located.
The floors are made of prefabricated wooden cassettes that are slid into place, while the ceilings are covered with perforated acoustic panels which, together with the curtains and carpeting, create a remarkably tranquil environment. “It is a counter model to staying in the library,” says Düsing. “There is background noise, but it is never overwhelming.”
The jury praised the accuracy and precision of the project – which was selected from a longlist of forty buildings across Europe – commenting on how it “took a clear architectural idea, scrutinized it and pushed it to its limits.” driven.” More than just a building, they added, “it can be conceived as a versatile system, combining technological inventions with a flexible and reusable principle.”
The project has already received widespread recognition in Germany, winning the national architecture prize of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and being praised by a newspaper critic as ‘what the future of German construction could look like’. In a time of scarce resources, it is praised for being as lean and frugal as possible: everything has been stripped down to the bare minimum, honed down to the most essential elements to fit within the total budget of €5.2 million (£4.47 million) (€ 3.2 million for the construction).
The project is all the more impressive because it is the architects’ very first building. Düsing, 40, and Hacke, 38, entered the competition in 2015, just a few years after graduating from London’s Architectural Association, where they met as students. They now both have an independent office in Berlin, but come together to collaborate with others when necessary. “It’s a survival strategy,” Hacke says of their loose network of seven. “We can work together if we need a larger workforce, and then go back to our smaller structures.” It is an agile practical model that is as agile, efficient and adaptable as the building itself.
The last winner of the EU Mies Prize, in 2022, was a similarly open and adaptable building for Kingston University, the palatial mansion designed by Grafton Architects. Previous British 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 EU prize of €60,000.