In Mannheim, architecture students from TU Kaiserslautern have designed and built a pavilion for and with refugees. The building, designed as a meeting place, is intended to create a place where refugees can exchange ideas.
Mannheim – a working-class city: in the last state election, a good 23% of voters here voted for the AfD – a trend that was confirmed in the federal election. The right-wing populists were particularly popular in Schönau in the north of Mannheim, a district that was dominated by social democrats for decades. Many see the refugee crisis as the reason for this – and the town on the Neckar was indeed the first reception point for refugees in the whole of Baden-Württemberg. This is due to the many empty barracks that date back to the Wehrmacht and the subsequent stationing of American troops after the Second World War – at the height of the refugee crisis, up to 12,000 people were housed here.
In other words, the right place for a refugee meeting center. The project is the brainchild of Stefan Krötsch, Jürgen Graf and Andreas Kretzer. The three know each other from the TU Kaiserslautern – Krötsch holds a junior professorship there in the field of “Tectonics in Timber Construction”, Graf a professorship in the field of “Structures and Materials” and Kretzer, who now teaches at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences, was a junior professor of digital tools. In Kaiserlautern, they developed the idea for the refugee meeting center with their students. Another important person was Tatjana Dürr, Head of Building Culture at the City of Mannheim: she became aware of the project and suggested the initial state reception facility in the Spinelli Barracks in the east of Mannheim as a location. She also maneuvered it through the authorities.
Building together
Initially, the students produced several drafts individually – they designed the necessary room program together with the refugees. Krötsch, Kretzer and Graf then selected five finalists from the work for further development in groups. The students then presented the results to a jury made up of Manfred Beuchert from the Karlsruhe Regional Council, Tatjana Dürr and Jens Weisener from the City of Mannheim and the three specialist departments. Then it was on to the execution and thus to an elementary component of the project: the aim from the outset was to involve the refugees in the construction process, which in concrete terms meant that 18 students built a house together with 25 refugees, three professors and two assistants. Before that, however, the costs, the dimensions, the supporting structure and the time frame had to be planned – a task that Krötsch, Graf and Kretzer mastered as a working group together with their students. The team worked closely with the building authorities of the city of Mannheim, especially when it came to public procurement and approval planning, which enabled the project to be awarded and approved within a very short time. But the project went even further: students and lecturers lived together with the refugees during the construction process. The operator of the accommodation was initially very concerned about this for fear of attacks by refugees. However, the team managed to convince those responsible of their concept and so the students moved into the Spinelli Barracks together with their teachers. There were no incidents.
Open and closed
The result is a building that is both open and intimate: a 500 square meter wooden pavilion with two courtyards, one of which opens onto the main access axis of the barracks site, while the other courtyard is enclosed on four sides and serves as a place of retreat. In its center is a small garden that is cultivated by the refugees. The large courtyard serves as an event venue with an open communal space that can also be used as a stage.
Photos: Atelier U20
