With a planning surprise, the winning design by the Augsburg office “Löhle neubauer Architekten BDA pmbb”, which was unanimously awarded by the jury, convinced the public for the renovation of the Eschborn city center.
In the future, the town hall, town hall, citizens' office and library will no longer be located under one roof.
The city center is thus given a new face: three individual buildings are to provide space and increase the quality of stay.
Mayor Adnan Shaikh (CDU) gave no information about the start of construction or the cost of the huge project.
Heike Lattka
Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Main-Taunus-Kreis.
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Any comment would be dubious in view of the situation in the construction sector, he said, but affirmed that it was questionable whether the project was originally capped by the city council in 2012 at 75 million euros.
This decision may have to be revoked, said Shaikh.
But the detailed planning can only begin when the contracts with the competition winners have been finalized and city councilors have given their approval for implementation.
This will be the case early next year.
Clinker brick for town hall and town hall
As architect Rainer Löhle explained, the construction of a two-storey town hall with a spacious foyer, a hall with 600 seats on the ground floor and a gallery in a building at the current location is planned. This is followed by a five-storey, recessed town hall, the city council meeting room of which will be retained. The city is thus complying with the requirements of the citizens' decision of 2012. Both structures are being moved back, the parking deck behind will disappear for this purpose. A new three-story administration wing is being built right next to the completely renovated old town hall building, in which space will be created for the specialist departments.
On the right-hand side of the Westerbach there is the new, two-story city library with a reading terrace, which signals openness through large glass facades facing the Rathausplatz. Each of the functional buildings is given its own address, he explained. As requested, the original clinker brick is reused in the facades of the town hall and town hall.
Shaikh praised the new building complex “has a cautious appearance”. The clear separation of functions is also convincing. The importance of the library will also be emphasized by the own building. He is particularly pleased with the use of bricks as the material for the new facades. The draft thus contains an element of continuity that is always desired by the citizens. Shaikh referred to the referendum from 2012 and the public participation that had taken place, which was the basis for the spatial program and the planning specifications. In the future, all employees of the city administration who are currently still distributed across branches will find a place in the town hall. The mayor announced workshop discussions for the public for the next year.In particular, the open space design of the new town hall square will be the subject of these workshops.
100 designs were submitted for the redesign, ten were shortlisted by the jury. As the chairman of the jury, the architect Zvonko Turkali, explained, there were only two participants who would have divided the various requirements over three buildings. In contrast to the other designs, which were sometimes too oversized for the existing area, Löhle and Neubauer convinced with the clear division and the clear inclusion of the surrounding quarter, such as the Rewe grocery store opposite the old and future town hall, he explained. The five-storey town hall will also remain the clearly visible tallest building, and the old council chamber with an atrium will be perfectly integrated into the new parts of the building, according to Turkali.Despite small interventions in the existing town hall, the design is functional, he emphasized. Or, as stated in the jury's written justification: "The design creates a highly attractive urban space in the center of Eschborn with a high degree of future viability."