Neighborhood University Hamburg - 1 views
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Ester Gisbert Alemany on 10 Apr 13The project uses the frame of a 1950s building as a shell in which to build its experimental space. Over the past five years, this formerly vacant building has been repurposed and extended with minimal costs for materials. Professor Bernd Kniess, dean of Hafencity University's urban design department, is primarily concerned with questions of sustainability, renewal and repurposing in urban space. How to transform the existing? How can the new emerge from the old? Both the building itself and the city around it are employed as resources. Every piece of the building that is removed in the remodeling is then redeployed with a new function elsewhere. Discarded materials from surrounding construction sites are harvested and upcycled at the UdN. This patchwork process requires those engaged in the reconstruction to deal with building's structure as it was found, to develop new courses of action and productively channel uncertainty and risk. In this situation, sustainability does not rest solely on the objects used. Most importantly, it is fostered by relationships-by the neighborhood.