DAM Award 2019: The best buildings of the year

The Dresden Cultural Palace has been in the center of the Saxon capital for 50 years. However, he was not named "Best Construction in Germany" until 2019, when the DAM Prize for Architecture in Germany went to the architects von Gerkan, Marg und Partner (gmp). They have renovated and rebuilt the former GDR prestige building from 2013 to 2017. That's "a little miracle," says Peter Cachola Schmal, director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum.

The building of Wolfgang Hänsch, which was opened in 1969 as the home of the Dresden Philharmonic, was one of the most important buildings in the GDR. As such, it would have had a good chance of being demolished like other unloved relics and replaced with a more pleasing structure. In Dresden alone, more than 70 buildings of East Modernism have been demolished over the past twenty years.

But in this case was given monument protection. Accordingly, the scope was narrow for the architects of gmp. They carefully restored the building and at the same time gave it a completely new inner life: "While the building, as an outstanding example of East German modernity, is largely restored externally according to the original state of 1969, new interior accents have been set in the spatial organization and development" , it says in the project documentation.

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The highlight lies in the combination of several functions: In the evening, the building accommodates concert goers and visitors to the cabaret "Herkuleskeule", during the day visitors to the Dresden City Library climb the staircase. The, after all, one of the largest in Germany, has also found space here thanks to the clever layout. It now encloses the concert hall in the upper two floors. This also benefits from the formerly miserable acoustics, explains Stephan Schütz, who designed the design with Meinhard von Gerkan and Nicolas Pomränke. The original floor plan was actually too wide, the sounds were lost in the room. By separating the space for the library, the new, narrower concert hall is a space "that sounds what it looks like and looks the way it sounds."

"Culture Living Room" in the city

But what took larger dimensions than planned, were the construction costs. From calculated 81.5 million were 103 million euros. According to "Saxon newspaper" was already "messed up during the planning and the contracts awarded without the plans were finished." An audit report identifies a number of shortcomings that have led to the cost increase of more than 25 percent. Also, the substance of the "Kultis" had not previously been sufficiently investigated and there were on top of that a lot of subsequent extra wishes of the three main users. Nevertheless, DAM director Cachola Schmal still finds: "Here we have a large-scale project that has been renovated for 100 million historic buildings and has been redesigned in a contemporary way - and where the time and budget have been respected."

On the question of the costs must be in the end probably the courts, the DAM price was about other things. For example, the newly designed Kulturpalast with its foyer is today an open point of contact for the people of Dresden. A kind of "cultural living room" in the city was created, says jury member Eva Maria Lang. The architects attest to a pleasant unfriendly handling of the monument. Her colleague Rainer Hofmann adds: "A public house that really deserves this description." In any case, the decision of the nine-member jury was unanimous. Although the competition was strong.

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DISPLAY

Yorck Förster, Christina Gräwe, Peter Cachola Schmal
Architecture Guide Germany 2019

Publishing company:

DOM publishers

Pages:

224

Price:

EUR 28,00

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Among the four finalists was the integrative construction project on the former flower wholesale market in Berlin, which was implemented in joint work by ARGE with the architectural firms Heide and von Beckenrath. Here, a building not only combines residential and commercial space, but also work studios, property and social housing. The city library in Rottenburg, which designed harris + kurrle as the interface between the medieval old town and the episcopal palace, was also convincing in terms of design - on an irregular floor plan that combines different heights in one building. Fourth finalist building: The training and seminar building of the Academy for International Cooperation (AIZ) of Waechter + Waechter, which architecturally cleverly structured the "unrest of learning" according to the jury.

The shortlist also offers many convincingly implemented ideas, some in the public space, but also single-family homes, a new corporate center, and the Berlin "Futurium", with which two then-scientific assistants from the stand against 300 internationally renowned architectural firms prevailed.

Also worth seeing: The monument-specific renovation of the gaudy revolving tank by Ludwig Leo on the Berlin lock island. You should also visit the Modern Gallery in the Saarland Museum, which designed Kuehn Malvezzi together with Michael Riedel. The artist known for his text works took a transcript of the state parliament debate, which was then fought over the museum building, and now let those words run like a graphic ant street on the entire concrete surface.

Anyone who has no time or desire to look at all these impressive buildings in the original (the corresponding architecture guide is to have for 28 €), until 21 April in the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt "The 25 best buildings in \ from Germany" in Visit the frame of an exhibition.