Intermediate Tones
This is a modal window.
The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.
Formal Metadata
| Title |
| |
| Title of Series | ||
| Number of Parts | 8 | |
| Author | ||
| Contributors | ||
| License | CC Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives 3.0 Germany: You are free to use, copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in unchanged form for any legal and non-commercial purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor. | |
| Identifiers | 10.5446/32220 (DOI) | |
| Publisher | ||
| Release Date | ||
| Language |
Content Metadata
| Subject Area | ||
| Genre | ||
| Abstract |
|
1
5
00:00
Hot workingNaval architectureToolSpare partFinger protocolCartridge (firearms)Kette <Zugmittel>TypesettingStock (firearms)MappeRoll formingCardboard (paper product)
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
Karsten Müller is a diploma architect. Her main subject is building and rebuilding buildings and making something new from something old, if we can say it just like that. She is having two courses this semester at the Universiti Kaiti in Karlsruhe. The one is called Reconstruct Better and the other one is called Deconstruct Better.
00:23
The semester has just begun, but have you already had the possibility to have first impression of the architectural students in Kaiti? Yeah, we had yesterday our second time and yesterday we already went to school here in Karlsruhe, went to the Anne Frank School and all the students went out
00:41
and took measurements of all kinds of building materials that we are planning to put in the catalog and then that catalog will be the basis for creating a new building here in Karlsruhe. I have also read that this new building in Karlsruhe, it's an old Vitripshof here in Karlsruhe. Will the project be made fully with students
01:02
or are they just making a small part of the project? I think it's just an idea at this point. So it's the project of the city of Karlsruhe and it's only gonna happen in a few years down the road but I think the city is interested in just looking at the idea and the possibilities there. So we're looking at the building materials in this school
01:22
and that would in the time actually work out to be used then in this Vitripshof and the Vitripshof is not there yet so it's really gonna be a new building and it could be very interesting to take on one hand existing materials and on the other hand combine it with interesting other materials,
01:41
new materials to make this building. Speaking of the existing materials, what is your strategy in doing that? Are you just making a catalog of the materials that they are in the building or are you just looking at the materials that are in general to have here in the region? Well in this case it's really the materials
02:00
coming from this school just because it's a realistic link that we can do there. You know there's a lot of stuff involved if you wanna get buildings out of a material the timing needs to work out, the companies need to be willing to dismantle it properly that takes time and cost so the building owner needs to be on board
02:20
then you have to store them so it's a whole chain of things behind it so now we just made this straight connection from the school to the Vitripshof because the city is interested but it's of course a theoretical thing at this point because it's only a few years down the road. Speaking about the circular architecture you are already some years in the field
02:42
also your firm is making some projects as seen today in your lecture you have a lot of beautiful projects of old buildings renewed with materials that they already had what are the obstacles? Where do you see improvements in the last years? I think it's an increased interest in the last years
03:01
on how can the construction sector be changed so that it actually fits within the climate goals and the planetary boundaries really on a larger scale. I think really due to Fridays for Future movement I think this has changed a lot that was really necessary and important
03:20
and what we've found is that we come from the background from us is that we work with the existing buildings so we've always worked with the existing stock of things and then really out of the frustration of how many buildings get torn down in Switzerland we've started this idea okay let's just make something new out of something old
03:42
because it was really mind boggling of how buildings that are not even 20, 30 years old get just torn down. When you start that and the main issues there is well it's all changing right? The first thing that changes is the design process because all of a sudden it's not like the way
04:01
a lot of us are trained that you just make as an architect you make a nice plan and a nice drawing and then you order the stuff and the right color and form and size and time to the construction site it's different right? First you say okay what's actually available? What is the size and the color of the things that are there within a reasonable timeframe
04:21
and within a reasonable surrounding of the place you wanna build new because you don't wanna start transporting stuff all over the place. And so then it becomes this back and forth between what do I need from the building from the inside out? Like what is the floor plan? How much is the window to floor ratio and so on?
04:40
And at the same time you look at the items you find and then you match that and then that becomes sort of an evolving design process. So you're actually just starting from the end so you don't make an idea and make something of it you just have the materials and you have to make something of these materials. It's really both it goes hand in hand
05:01
you don't just take anything that's there right? It's really a conscious choice you're making what works at all and what matches the project and the client and the location and so on but it goes hand in hand and then I think there's a lot of other things that are new and really difficult in the beginning
05:21
like there's no warranty for example on these materials and then you have a perception in the mind that people say, oh this is old I want something new. And especially in Switzerland when you have very high labor cost we cannot really be cheaper when we buy reused material
05:40
which means that people often say why should I pay as much as for a new thing when it's old? Like there's like this whole perception that a new thing is necessarily better than an old thing which might actually not be true in architecture or in architectural materials because often the older materials are really better than the new ones. Is the mindset around the circular building
06:02
different in Germany and in Switzerland? I think in Switzerland now I find it quite surprising how quickly it has picked up like the interest in this topic and it's really in the context of this larger question like I said, how to reach the climate goals or how do you have a portfolio
06:20
that can sort of become carbon neutral and so on. And in Switzerland I find there is a fair amount of really good working tools that help us as planners to actually calculate what is actually the footprint of my design. So I can fairly quickly compare different designs and get a sort of almost like a felt understanding
06:42
of what the impact of my designs are. And I think this is really lacking in Germany, there is no such easy thing and then it makes it harder for people to sort of get the knowledge around that field and also it's harder for let's say a city
07:01
or an investor to actually ask for that in a competition let's say. So in Switzerland we see that now that in the competition they want the teams to make a life cycle assessment calculation or something or just bring in numbers here and those numbers then are really part of the decision making who will do that project
07:21
and I think that's not the case in Germany yet. Today in your lecture you were speaking about intermediate tones in the question of demolition or preservation of the buildings. The composition of dismantled and this life experienced components, are they also challenging our aesthetic views on the things? What do you think?
07:40
Would the perception of beauty be different in the next years? Because from the building that you make, from your projects you can see it on the design level, it has more of this industrial style or Bauhaus style. Should these places be made more cosier in the future or is it more about people changing their perceptions about it? First of all I think the pictures I've showed
08:02
are really the pictures from our office and I think it has to be said very clearly that it is a design that we did, right? So I also talked about the Basel pavilion where we actually had a set of given materials and there were different teams working on that and the results were completely different.
08:22
So what the people make out of this material is very, very much linked to their own design methods. So I don't think it's fair to say it's always gonna look like that. I think what we're lacking now is more examples like the Basel pavilion where we actually then see that it's not true, right?
08:42
Because now we don't know that yet, we don't have like a portfolio of examples where we can say, oh look, those guys made it like that and they made it like that and it looked totally different. So I think there, maybe down the road, you know, a year or two, I think we'll have much more examples that we can then relate to, so that's one thing.
09:00
And I think in the immediate tone what I was trying to go after is that I think we can really start looking much more closely to what is possible, right? Because today we often have the situation, we have a building and then the use of the building goes away, right? But the building is still fine. Like the use has much shorter life cycle than the building itself.
09:21
So the use is out, the building is here, what are we doing with this now, right? When we look at the building, what the building can do and then find a use that works with it, it's much less invasive in the structure than when I say, oh, now I want this building that used to be a hospital, an office building and then I find that this and this doesn't work.
09:41
But then often what happens is that I have an existing building, I say, okay, I want this new use, I put this new use on top of it and I realize, oh, I have to change all the structure and all the windows and the exits aren't working and it's gonna cost so much, it's gonna cost so much more than a new building, so you're gonna tear it down and build something new. But there, I think it's really all these steps in between
10:03
that even when you come to the point where you say, this building really cannot be saved for whatever structural reasons or so, you can then start looking at the components of the building, can you save those, can you reuse? And there, I think is really a wide range to be discovered.