Büchel Aachen Wiese: Competition decided

The planning for Aachen’s Büchel old town district has reached the next phase. In 2021, the planning committee voted to replace a multi-storey parking lot with a high-quality green and open space. A landscape planning competition has now been held for this.Read all about the winning design here.

Städtische Entwicklungsgesellschaft Aachen (SEGA) launched the anonymized open space competition at Büchel Aachen. The competition is also funded by the federal program “National Urban Development Projects” (NPS). This is because the funding program accepted the project “Cooperative Development of the Büchel Old Town Quarter” as a “Premium Project” 2021. The winning design was created by GM013 Landschaftsarchitektur from Berlin.

Büchel is located in Aachen’s historic city center. The district is located within the buffer zone of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Aachen Cathedral and above the thermal waters of the city center. It all sounds idyllic at first. However, many aspects on site are causing problems. On the one hand, vacancies are spreading in Aachen’s city center. Secondly, the planning area is currently a meeting place for people from the drug and prostitution milieu. There is also potential for improvement from an ecological point of view: there is a lack of green spaces, especially unsealed ones. This has an impact on the microclimate and inner-city biodiversity. All of these aspects currently result in a low quality of local recreation in Büchel Aachen.

Urban society, city administration and politics are transforming Büchel Aachen into a forward-looking urban quarter in a participatory process. The competition creates a foundation: Büchel Wiese is to symbolize the focal point for all generations. The aim is to create an identity-forming, lively and future-oriented open space. Two aspects are at the forefront of this: firstly, a lot of land should be unsealed and high-quality greenery planned instead. Secondly, an intensively used meeting place for social interaction is to be created. The planned building development will frame the Büchel Wiese.

The chairman of the jury, Frank Lohrberg, praised the competition winner for Büchel Wiese as follows: “I found the winning design by GM013 Landschaftsarchitektur from Berlin particularly convincing due to the diversity of the green neighborhood terraces with numerous trees and especially the element of the “cooling grove” as well as the square area in front of the future “Wissen” building block. The concept works both in the first construction phase and across the entire area and deals skillfully with the existing differences in height. City Planning Councillor Frauke Burgdorff says: “We have awarded a prize to a design that has very special qualities. Outstanding design qualities, a great square in front of the Wissen building block and – what is very important to me – intelligent answers to the questions of climate protection and how to deal with future flood events. The meadow will be beautiful and smart! And it creates a completely new offer in the concert of squares”. Johannes Hucke, Chairman of the Planning Committee, is also convinced by Büchel Aachen: “With this good result, we are creating a high ecological and urban development quality for the city center. It shows that we can approach the process of climate-resilient transformation with courage and confidence.

The residents of Aachen should help to further debate and concretize the Büchel Wiese project. The competition entries will be available to view on the SEGA website from mid-August. The winner will also be exhibited in an open-air exhibition on the grounds of “ZwischenZeit” at Büchel Aachen. And a further participation phase will follow in late summer 2023.

A competition was also held and won for a project in Dortmund-Derne. Everything about the new Glücksstraße district here.