The pediment of memory

Bernhard Franken is primarily associated with parametric design. Now he has built a townhouse in Frankfurt city center. Completely conservative with gables and a perforated façade? Only apparently. The memory of the previous building is inscribed in a sophisticated way.

In the early days of parametric design (i.e. around fifteen years ago), Bernhard Franken caused quite a stir with the large “Dynaform” pavilion developed for BMW. Dynaform was an image of the dynamic movement of driving coagulated into a building; at the time, the new possibilities for the parametric transformation of a supporting structure were perceived euphorically. But the Dynaform pavilion was also an “architecture parlante”. However, this side of the design – that it was also about the fundamental possibility of a narrative in architecture – was given less attention. However, Bernhard Franken has remained connected to both narrative in architecture and parametric design. The house at Kleine Rittergasse 11 in the middle of Alt-Sachsenhausen is such an architectural narrative about history, memory, Sachsenhausen, about the peculiar Frankfurt cider and, last but not least, about the client. The gables of the house, or rather the sequence of houses, are therefore semantic gables – a necessary component of the narrative.

On the plot, which is situated on a small square, there was a multi-storey half-timbered house from the mid-19th century. This was adjoined to the north by a flat connecting building and the rear building. Originally, the houses were to be renovated, but a previous owner had exposed the load-bearing half-timbered structure of the corner building and the wood was now far too deteriorated for renovation. The new three-part group of houses now not only simply cites the cubature of the previous buildings, but is in a certain sense a work of remembrance.

Franken quotes the former shape in essence, but not in detail. The ridge direction, gable position, roof pitch and eaves height were retained in accordance with the building design statutes for Alt-Sachsenhausen. However, the former shielding roof overhang has been removed and the new roof sits flush with the vertical of the façade. It was covered with slate, but the flat pitch means that passers-by in the alleyways cannot see anything of it. In general, the project is characterized by a certain no-blesse for the knowledgeable connoisseur.

You can find out more in Baumeister 12/2015.