REVISITING THE EXISTING: Resources from Sites of Speculation
“That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is – all the new construction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of the ‘romantic ruin’ because the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built.”
– Robert Smithson, A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey
Our studio will focus on Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city and second largest container port in Europe. The “HafenCity,” a new district of Hamburg located in former port areas at the river Elbe, has been under construction since 2008. The centerpiece of this project is the unfinished Elbtower, designed by David Chipperfield Architects to be the tallest building in Hamburg and the third tallest in Germany at 244 meters high and 64 floors. Advertised as “so much more than an office,” the proposal for the new mixed-use development included a hotel as well as retail and exhibition space. In October of 2023, Signa Sports United, part of the parent company of the Elbtower, filed for insolvency and construction immediately halted, leaving the building shell at a height of approximately 100 meters, a monument to hubris. City officials maintain hope that a new investor will be found to complete construction and have repeatedly stressed that no tax money will be used for the project. Various independent groups have been campaigning to rethink how the Elbtower might be used. “Your ruin is our gain,” they claim.
Using the story of the Elbtower as a starting point, the question of the studio is: How to revisit the existing? How can we turn waste into value? How can we transform this extractive ruin into a vital resource for the city and its inhabitants? How can we resource from unfinished sites of speculation to think about ways to adapt, transform, and re-envision existing buildings as well as the aesthetic value of reuse to create successful models of regenerative urbanism?
In this studio, we will develop strategies for reducing, repairing, recycling, reusing, repurposing, and resourcing from our existing built environment to reconcile the need for density with the need to reduce levels of material extraction. Just like the myriads of abandoned malls and post-pandemic vacant towers around the world, these speculative structures of global urbanization “rise into ruin” as our warming planet faces rapid changes. We, however, see them also as energy already spent and the harbingers of a new paradigm that is, as the slogan says, “So much more than an office.”
The studio will visit the project site in Hamburg, as well as Copenhagen, to study the most current reference projects in adaptive reuse.
The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Tuesday, the first meeting of this course will be on Wednesday, September 4th. It will meet regularly thereafter.