Strasbourg is an elegant, expensive city. The unfortunate German past has been overcome and it is now easier to communicate in Alsace in English than in German. In this European environment, Les Haras has a clear French accent.

Strasbourg is an elegant, expensive city. The unfortunate German past has been overcome and it is now easier to communicate in Alsace in English than in German. In this European environment, Les Haras has a clear French accent.

The satnav had sent us through desolate suburbs, followed by a few oversized administrative buildings and then a dilapidated hospital. We should be there soon. In fact, after a bend in the road, the clay-colored walls of the former stud farm appeared, which has been home to an elegant hotel since last fall without any external pomp. From here, it really is only a few steps to Petite France, where the old town begins.

The hotel itself leaves no doubt as to its category and proudly presents its French character. Here in France, we would rely on the obligatory standards of historical architecture, on sharp incisions of glass, steel, concrete and, apart from the material colors, on strong contrasts. Here, architect Sanjit Manku and designer Patrick Jouin were inspired by the building’s former use as stables. In the foyer, horses cast their shadows like giant silhouettes. The room doors have been given sturdy wooden reveals, rough brown leather frames the beds and lies like a saddle over the heavy stool blocks.

The bar, which is also the breakfast room, is lined with oak planks, black enamel pendulums send dispassionate beams of light across the tables. Other details will be classified as bourgeois: the thick sand-colored carpets that run through the corridors and up the stairs and mark the room doors with the heraldic lily motif of the Bourbons. The discreet golden sheen on the fittings, mirrors and toilet brushes also acclimatizes nouveau riche guests rather than true nobility. A separate toilet offers comfort, but without a hand basin, you don’t want to know how many handles and switches the last guest touched on the way to the bathroom (toilets still have a makeshift quality in French restaurants).

Fortunately, however, the architecture at Les Haras has always been able to prevail over the design. For example, the many necessary staircases are designed as angular or curved works of spatial art. The highlight is the inviting spiral staircase in the restaurant (run by Marc Haeberlin!). It looks like a domesticated version of Behnisch’s staircase in the Bundestag in Bonn.

It is magical to end the day with a last glass in the hotel’s courtyard square. The former riding arena with a mighty Sophora Japonica is lined on three sides by the old stables, while a new wing of red bricks closes off the fourth. Without jointing, they form a rough industrial façade in which all openings are framed with brown sheet metal (unfortunately only painted, no Corten steel).

If you are looking for other architectural destinations, you should visit the church of St. Pierre-le-Jeune, the restored rooms in the Aubette (van Doesburg, Arp, Taeuber-Arp) and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art by Adrien Fainsilber. It’s hard to imagine it without the colorful foil façade by Daniel Buren (until January 4, 2015).

Address

Les Haras
23 Rue de Glacières
6700 Strasbourg
003 3 90 20 50 00
info@les-haras-hotel.com
www.les-haras-hotel.com

Under the title “Making Heimat”, this year’s German Pavilion in Venice is questioning the relationship between migration and architecture.

Oh, that was nice for the people of Munich: not only was the program for the German Pavilion at this year’s Architecture Biennale presented in Munich instead of Berlin as expected. No, the team led by Peter Cachola Schmal from the German Architecture Museum (Frankfurt) had also chosen a demonstratively un-Munich location: the “Bellevue di Monaco” in Müllerstrasse. This is actually an alternative cultural project (one of the few in Munich). A meeting and living space for refugees is to be created here. In the vicinity of posh hostels such as Léonwohlhage’s Seven, the walls are bare and the heating was weak during last Thursday’s journalist scrum. Munich’s cultural scene was underground – and clearly relished the role. The team around Cachola Schmal, curator Oliver Elser and project coordinator Anna Scheuermann felt right at home.

The pavilion program for Venice will also be socially committed and unvarnished. “Making Heimat” is the title, which refers directly to the fragile relationship between the familiar and the foreign, which is always at stake in the discourse surrounding the current waves of migration. One part has already been realized – a database with a wide variety of building projects for immigrants. Further program items will follow. Cachola Schmal and Elser provided a foretaste that arouses curiosity. The focus will be on the theses of journalist Doug Saunders, whose book “Arrival City” focuses on the destination cities of large migratory movements – from the perspective of the migrants. Following this approach, the focus in Venice will be on German arrival cities. Cities like Offenbach. The city is a centralization point for many migration histories. And these are also reflected in urban development. Without the influx of migrants, Offenbach and our cities as a whole would look very different.

This idea will continue to be an important perspective on the consequences of migration in the future. What is currently taking place in response to the influx of migrants in Germany is a delayed and perhaps inadequate, but nonetheless tangible building promotion program. It is right not to differentiate between housing for migrants and for locals. Because even if refugees are not the core target group of a strategic immigration policy, they need housing just as much as Germans and the well-educated high potentials that traditional immigration societies have in mind. Internal differentiation can only lead to exclusion, which benefits no one.

What is important in this context, however, is that a simple “business as usual” approach to construction would be wrong. We don’t just need more living space. We also need others. It will be exciting to see what models the DAM makers’ database will reveal. Elser and Co. showed the above example on Thursday: accommodation in Oranienburg, Brandenburg, by BBP (Oliver Langhammer), Berlin. Elser sees a “perhaps rather southern” architectural style at least being considered. And that in the barren, decidedly unsouthern Brandenburg. The perhaps less Teutonic-orderly use is likely to do the rest to create a new and certainly irritating spatial atmosphere here – as in other Arrival locations.

It could therefore be that the image of our arrival cities will also become more “southern” through new architecture. Or to put it more fundamentally: Migration is changing our country.

Even if this change seems less evident these days due to the closing borders. Nevertheless, the transformation will continue. If we face up to it, Europe will also become culturally richer as a result – because it will literally outgrow itself. Of course, this does not mean that migratory movements will not bring massive new problems with them.

The Pavilion curators know this. And Biennale chief curator Alejandro Aravena knows it too. In this respect, one criterion for judging Venice will also be whether the Biennale succeeds in coming across as culturally constructive – without settling for a do-gooder project positivism.