studio
onomato

Sharpening one’s eye

The module was preceded by a preparatory exercise designed to enable students to sharpen their eye for detail and spatial relationships within their built environment. Using case studies, they examined how architecture creates space with minimal resources. The focus was on structure, material, light, scale and joinery as fundamental design parameters.

 → Close observation was deliberately understood as an integral part of the design process – reading, identifying and classifying spatial qualities is an essential foundation of architectural work.

ANALYSIS – STRUCTURE – MATERIAL – LIGHT – SCALE – JOINTS

The research established a common basis for the subsequent design process. It raised awareness of the interplay between materiality and construction, as well as the atmospheric qualities that arise from this.

Reading the context

It was with this sharpened perspective that the engagement with the Beller Church began. The late-Gothic ruin is not a neutral design space, but a place with its own history, materiality and spatial presence. Walls, openings and traces form a fragmentary structure whose atmosphere is already palpable before any intervention takes place.

 → Every placement, every line and every decision therefore had to be measured against what was already there. The first step was not about determining what additions might be necessary to revitalise the site. Rather, the crucial factor was to precisely identify and articulate the existing spatial qualities and to understand them as the starting point for the design.

BELLER CHURCH – EXISTING STRUCTURE – FRAGMENT – ATMOSPHERE

Refining ideas

Having engaged with the site, the students initially developed their own designs. They responded in different ways to transitions, sightlines, use, protection, materials, construction and atmosphere. Models on a scale of 1:20 were used to examine the spatial configurations directly within the context of the Beller Church and to compare their impact within the existing structure.

 → In this collaborative process, the individual designs were not evaluated against one another, but were examined in terms of their underlying concepts, spatial qualities and structural principles. During the joint discussion, it was established which approaches were particularly viable for the site, which spatial relationships recurred, and which ideas could complement one another effectively. The aim was not to select a single design, but to distil the essential design principles from the various positions.

These fundamental ideas were related to one another, further developed and gradually consolidated into a shared architectural approach.

Learning by doing

The joint design marked the start of a second phase of the project. The students organised themselves into interest-based groups and took responsibility for structural and construction planning, materials, fabrication, logistics and assembly. The architectural concept they had previously developed together was transformed into specific components, connections, dimensions and processes. On a 1:1 scale, the significance of the drawing changed fundamentally.

 → What appears as a precise line on the plan becomes material thickness, weight, joints, tolerances and actual dimensions during construction. Decisions that had previously been made in the abstract now had to prove themselves in practical, spatial terms.

LINES BECOME DIMENSIONS, JOINTS AND TOLERANCES.

It was precisely this shift from drawing to fabrication that formed an essential part of the learning process. Proportions could be experienced physically, material properties could be felt directly, and structural relationships became comprehensible. At the same time, it became clear what consequences even minor design decisions have at the built scale. Not every question could be definitively answered in advance. Some solutions only emerged during the fabrication, assembly and alignment of the components. The construction thus became not merely the realisation of a finished design, but a further phase of the design process. It was only at the built scale that it became definitively clear how the intervention relates to the existing ruin – in terms of its size, its proximity to the historic walls, its openness and its material presence.

EXISTING STRUCTURE – INTERVENTION – HEAVINESS – LIGHTNESS

Tugurium thus did not result in an autonomous piece of architecture that can be detached from its site. Its impact arises from its relationship with Beller Church: between new and existing structures, between protection and openness, and between the heaviness of the historic masonry and the lightness of the new construction.

 → Not to complete, but to enable a new experience of what already exists. The intervention does not attempt to reconstruct the ruin or to reshape it aesthetically. Rather, with a few precise elements, it creates a new space within the existing structure. It is only through the interplay between the existing structure and the intervention that a new spatial situation emerges, one which takes up the existing qualities of the Beller Church whilst simultaneously enabling contemporary use.