>>>RE-covering/ in search of RELATIONAL
architecture
Thomas Willads’ Prora series [1]
“(…) Time cannot be stopped in its tracks, but there is no
consideration in the arsenal of preservation of how its effects should be
managed, how the ‘preserved’ could stay alive, and yet evolve. (…)”
Rem Koolhaas [2]
Stating that
“the past becomes the only plan for the future” in the Cronocaos manifesto presented at the 2010 Venice Biennale, Rem
Koolhaas points out that from cultural, environmental and economic concerns,
‘preservation’ is and will be a focus area defining the agenda
of many architectural offices as well as educational programmes. However, in
this context ‘preservation’ has a broader sense. It does not refer to processes
focusing merely on restoration, but opens up to the processes of
‘transformation’ that allow the ‘preserved’ to “stay alive, and yet evolve.”
Transformation
will thus define a framework within which the common overall theme Covering will be studied during the
Spring Semester. Concordantly,
continuing explorations of the relational qualities of architecture performed
in the Fall Semester and involving site-specific architectural interventions,
Unit 2+3d will focus on the transformation of Prora on the island of Rügen in
Germany.
Designed by the
architect Clemens Klotz (1886–1969), the massive concrete complex constructed
as a KdF beach resort in 1936-39 – never completed and turned into ruins – will
with its historical, cultural and environmental values provide an extraordinary
source of material for our studies.
Through data
collection, selected readings and project development the unit aims to actively
question ideas about preservation and
the found. In this context,
historical, environmental and phenomenological perspectives are identified as
optics of paramount importance, which will frame the unit’s approach to
architectural transformation, understood as the action or rather interaction
between different fields, such as the physical, perceptual and contextual.
Thus, prompting a dialogue between the
found, the lost and the new, and seeking to find a balance
between aesthetic thinking and technical and sustainable viability, the scope
of the unit´s work is to think and materialize ways in which acts of
resilience, reclaim, revaluation, reuse, recycling or re-COVERING can define new relations, focusing particularly on:
(1) relations
between different programs,
(2) relations
between the public and the private,
(3) relations
between intervention(-s) and the site specific natural (incl. climatic)
conditions,
(4) relations between the human body and space,
(5) relations
between the material and the immaterial
(6) relations
between the generic and the specific
The study method
incorporates tasks of different complexity and duration in close relation to
theoretical investigations, as well as the development of a practical tool-base
as a foundation for project work and its communication. Studies will be
performed in an on-going dialogue between individual and collaborative
production in teams and collective unit production. Following an initial
individual positioning of students in relation to the site and the design
brief, collectively performed analysis of programmatic relations as well as
relevant examples of transformation will contribute to establishing a
collaborative design strategy and developing individual projects. Moreover, experiments
on different forms of representation and communication are to be carried out
continuously during the projects development. The outcome of this production will
be made public by the end of the Spring Semester.
>>>Field
of operation
Prora[3] was
designed by the architect Clemens Klotz (1886–1969) – who was awarded a gold
medal for the project at the Paris World’s Fair in 1937 – and constructed as a
KdF beach resort on the island of Rügen in 1936-39. Inspired by the English
holiday camps known as Butlin Camps,
following its completion the Prora complex was intended to house 20,000
holidaymakers. Conceived as a “vacation machine” which would offer every worker
deserved holiday at the beach in the way that no-one was to feel under or over
privileged, the 4,5 km long accommodation blocks contain the small cabin-like and
same-looking rooms distributed over five stories. The rooms – of 5 by 2.5
metres each – were to have two beds, an armoire (wardrobe) and a sink and were designed
to face the Baltic sea, to the East, while corridors and sanitation were
located on the land side. The private rooms were supplemented by communal
toilets and showers, furthermore ballrooms on each floor. The ground floor was to be
reserved for shops and other service facilities.
Never completed
due to the outbreak of WWII (in 1939 all accommodation houses were finished in
the raw) plans included a massive indoor arena designed by architect Erich
Putlitz (1892-1945); two wave-swimming pools and a theatre. A large dock for
passenger ships was also planned, but none of this was ever completed.
Today, the area of
the unfinished resort mainly consits of historic buildings, which have been
altered during the GDR times, through expansion and reconstruction projects
carried out between 1952 and 1990, during which time it was used as a military
base. The building complex consisted originally of eight blocks. One block in
the South does not exist anymore and two in the North exist as ruins. Although
the basic structural concept was preserved, the typical architectural décor of
the 1930s was largely eliminated. Occupying some 264,000 square meters on more
than 325 hectares of land, Prora is one of the largest surviving architectural
legacies from the Nazi era.
Physical context
On the narrow heath (the Prora) which separates the lagoon of the Kleiner Jasmunder Bodden from the Baltic Sea the Prora complex is located on an extensive bay known as the Prorer Wiek between the Sassnitz and Binz regions.
On the narrow heath (the Prora) which separates the lagoon of the Kleiner Jasmunder Bodden from the Baltic Sea the Prora complex is located on an extensive bay known as the Prorer Wiek between the Sassnitz and Binz regions.
Situated roughly
150 m from the beach, the existing, now partly ruinous Prora complex consists
of eight identical building blocks extending over a length of altogether
4.5 kilometres.
The climate is
in the temperate zone. The winters are not particularly cold, with mean
temperatures in January and February of 0.0°C. Summers are cool, with a mean
temperature in August of 16.3°C. There is an average rainfall of
520–560 mm and approximately 1800–1870 hours of sunshine annually.
Brief
Physically
limited by its urban location The Berlin University of Arts (Universität der
Künste Berlin – UdK, including fine arts, architecture, media and design, music
and the performing arts collages) decides to expand its activities to the
island of Rügen because of a generous donation from a benefactor. Particularly
enthusiastic about the prospect of offering their students and faculty
radically improved workshop facilities, UdK also wishes to benefit from being
able to experiment with ways in which their artists / artistic production can
encounter, and potentially involve a wider public.
Since by the
current Prora administrators regarded as an asset to the creation of a
culturally dynamic environment, UdK is offered the opportunity to inhabit
part(-s) of the Prora complex with facilities framing the following activities:
>housing unit
and work space (in- and out-house) for 12 artists
>common
spaces (such as a small library, 2 seminar rooms etc. – with publicly open or
partly open access)
>in- and
outdoor exhibition/performance spaces
>storage
(materials, workshop(-s) and exhibition)
>potential
connections to the exhibition spaces, research centre and archive of the ProraZentrum
The action of
transformation should encourage to critically explore what relations 'art' – arts
learning, production, exhibition and performance – may constitute, and how the spaces
can frame this processes. In this context the UdK ‘extension’ and inhabitation
of Prora should be taken beyond the simplistic definition of ‘adaptation’ of
the existing building, seeking strategies, which would favour flexibility and
customisation over standardisation.
This programme
is not to design a learning centre, but rather to think of ways in which
architecture can define relations – opening up to radical and pioneering ideas,
invention and… provocation.
[1] <http://www.prora.dk/> [accessed: 15 December 2013]
[3] The description is
based on the information extracted from the following publications:
A Guide for Prora. Historic
Round Trip (2010), Rostock: Publicationsof ProraZentrum e.V.
Education-Docuemntation-Research
STOMMER,
Rainer (2005) “Mass Tourist Architecture of the 1930s” in: Bau und Raum. Annual Building
and Regions, Jarbuch 2005, Federal Office for Building and Regional
Planning
