chezweitz museal and urban scenography

Wandelhaus Aschersleben

Wandelhaus Aschersleben

A project for the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Urban Redevelopment Saxony-Anhalt 2010

IBA 2010 Stadtumbau Sachsen-Anhalt, City of Aschersleben

A declin­ing city pop­u­la­tion often leads to an increas­ing num­ber of vacant build­ings. These build­ings are no longer used, fall into dis­re­pair over time, and ren­o­va­tion is often no longer worth­while. After a few years, they are even­tu­al­ly demol­ished. In this way, gaps grad­u­al­ly appear in the pre­vi­ous­ly dense urban fabric.

As part of the IBA Urban Rede­vel­op­ment 2010, the his­tor­i­cal­ly rich city of Asch­er­sleben addressed this prob­lem in an inno­v­a­tive way. The goal was to cre­ate a process that seems almost impos­si­ble in many shrink­ing cities: a tar­get­ed shrink­age from the out­side in. Asch­er­sleben pur­sued a strat­e­gy of pri­mar­i­ly car­ry­ing out decon­struc­tion on the city’s out­skirts, while strength­en­ing and revi­tal­iz­ing the archi­tec­tural­ly valu­able his­toric cen­ter. In this con­text, a cen­tral­ly locat­ed, impor­tant thor­ough­fare, which forms a semi­cir­cle around the old town, was trans­formed from a traf­fic-dom­i­nat­ed prob­lem area into a ​“sta­bi­liz­ing ring.” Build­ings were demol­ished at sev­er­al loca­tions, and the result­ing open spaces were acti­vat­ed for artis­tic uses. Thus, the exper­i­ment of the world’s first ​“Dri­ve Thru Gallery” was cre­at­ed in the street sec­tion ​“Behind the Customs”.

01 St W 11 G100 Farbe

In addi­tion to the ​“Hybrid Walls” (Dri­ve Thru Gallery project) with their house-high foil pan­els illus­trat­ed by Christo­pher Win­ter and Andre Volk­mann, the ​“Wan­del­haus” (Wan­der­ing House) is anoth­er instal­la­tion con­ceived by chezweitz and real­ized in 2010.

A house that is both present and absent, an opti­cal illu­sion that appears and dis­ap­pears as one dri­ves by. This spa­tial image, com­posed of col­ored ste­les, was cre­at­ed on a demo­li­tion site at a cen­tral inter­sec­tion. It only reveals itself to the dri­ver from an undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed col­or code to an inte­ri­or — per­haps of the house that once stood there.

The many instal­la­tions of the Dri­ve Thru Gallery and oth­er urban rede­vel­op­ment projects were then pre­sent­ed in the final exhi­bi­tion in 2010 in the spaces of a new­ly ren­o­vat­ed card­board fac­to­ry. chezweitz pur­sued the sceno­graph­ic idea of​the­mat­i­cal­ly fill­ing the space from a per­spec­tive, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly allow­ing it to be expe­ri­enced as emp­ty from anoth­er angle through the graph­ic ele­ment of the line. With these projects, the Hybrid­walls and the Wan­del­haus on the Dri­ve Thru Gallery, chezweitz was able to show that sceno­graph­ic-urban­is­tic inter­ven­tions have an emi­nent and fer­til­iz­ing effect with­in clas­si­cal urban development.

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Wandelhaus Aschersleben

Projekt zur Internationalen Bauausstellung (IBA) Stadtumbau Sachsen-Anhalt 2010

Auftraggeber

Stadt Aschersleben

Projektkoordination

Sonja Beeck

Projektleitung

Ria Uhlig

Szenografie

chezweitz & roseapple, Detlef Weitz und Rose Epple mit Christian Fehr, Michael Kunter, Martin Siegmund

Bauleitung und Tragwerksplanung

Teska + Weghoff - Beratende Ingenieure im Bauwesen in Kooperation mit Landschaftsarchitekt Udo Jobst

Leistung

Architektur 1-8, Konzept, Urbane Szenografie

Fotos

Volker Kreidler