We inform you about the competition results in April: the town center in Markt Erkheim, Südpark and Staudenweiher in Kelsterbach and the redesign of the market square in Neuerburg.

Interested in the latest competition results in landscape architecture, but don’t have time to look at them properly? In the G+L competition overview, Heike Vossen regularly provides information on the most exciting competitions. Here are the competition results in April 2021.

All images: © fischer heumann

The Sieg design promises a lively town center – restructured, legible and barrier-free for pedestrians. The landscape architects differentiate between a “paved center” along Marktstraße and a “green center” on Babenhauser Straße, which is transformed into a green corridor. A series of squares links the two centers defined in this way. More space and new qualities for pedestrians will be created along Marktstrasse thanks to a reduced road width and rearranged car parking spaces. The new market square in front of the town hall acts as the southern prelude to the town center, with the square at the inn at the northern end. The paving, which is limited to the path area along the market street, also covers the course of the street in both squares and forms a spatial bracket. The green center runs through the village with a footpath and cycle path between two streams. The prelude to the south is the paved square with large seating rings. Seating steps, stepping stones and a pump provide access to the banks and water.

All pictures: © bbzl

In the 1970s, the Südpark was created in Kelsterbach, Hesse, from a former backfilled gravel pit. The aging park is now to be transformed into a sustainable city park. The competition is embedded in the overarching “Kelsterbach Climate Island” program. The winning design creates a clear spatial and pathway concept that links Südpark and Staudenweiher with each other and with the outside world. Play and activity areas are added to the sides of the pathways and combine a diverse, flexible range of spaces and activities in the respective areas. With minimal intervention, the planners have divided the previously undefined woodland structures into clear woodland clusters and clearings, thus emphasizing the characteristic topography. The five large clearings form independent spaces with different uses – the forest room, the blue clearing by the pond, the play clearing with sports facilities, the meadow clearing for sunbathing and the picnic clearing. A barrier-free circular path lines the perennial pond and links it to the outside. There are viewing windows at each of the entrances.

All images: © Franz Reschke Landschaftsarchitektur GmbH

The market square as a “tableau”: This is how the Sieg design envisages it and aims to highlight the central square in accordance with its intended function as a stage for urban life. A uniform granite paving carpet is to define the old town in future, varying only in format and laying direction. The center of the square stands out as an inlay – darker and in large-format paving, with a uniform circulation and distance to the adjacent facades. Two loose rows of trees and benches support the spatial setting of the tableau on the long sides. The long rows of benches can be used on both sides and flank without separating. The market square itself should remain as free of traffic as possible: A corridor is defined for deliveries and parking spaces are arranged in the southern market street. At the end of the square in the north, the design also prioritizes pedestrian use up to the adjacent river and dispenses with further parking spaces.

Further competition results will be published at the end of April.

Here you can find the competition results in March 2021.

Read more competition results in March 2021 here.

Although remote, this hostel has little to do with the simple life in the countryside: The 7132 Hotel has opened next to Peter Zumthor’s thermal spa in Vals – with luxurious guest rooms specially designed by and for (star) architects.

Although remote, this hostel has little to do with the simple life in the countryside: The 7132 Hotel has opened next to Peter Zumthor’s thermal spa in Vals – with luxurious guest rooms specially designed by and for (star) architects.

It is said that ingenious architectural designs are sometimes created on napkins. What is certain, however, is that the thermal baths in Vals had already been built out of words before they were realized: “You have to build something,” Peter Zumthor had assured the Graubünden community, “that doesn’t exist yet. Not glass fun. But a thermal spa that is unique.” It was opened in 1996 – and the building, which is set into the slope, is made of concrete and 60,000 strips of Vals quartzite in three thicknesses, two widths and each 3.20 meters long.

The iron-rich water has dyed the wall at the entrance a rusty red, where it flows unfiltered. Otherwise, the thermal baths, which were listed as a historical monument just two years after they were completed, do not show their age; 190 people still book a few hours every day to bathe in the magnificent architecture and in water that is between 14 and 35 degrees and rich in calcium sulphate hydrogen carbonate. The spa architecture has won countless awards, but unfortunately its figures have never been as black as the quartzite from which it is built. Peter Zumthor would have liked to take over the spa himself, but the cash-strapped municipality narrowly opted for a buyer who promised to take over not only the spa but also the surrounding hotel and apartment buildings from the 1960s and turn them into a four-star hotel: the four-star “House of Architects” and the five-star superior hotel “7132” – incidentally the zip code of Vals. Guests can not only bathe in luxury, but also live, eat and travel in luxury – the restaurant at the 7132 has been awarded two Michelin stars and 18 Gault Millau points. And the price of the penthouse suites includes arrival in the hotel’s own helicopter.

The renovation began in 2012: Thom Mayne made the entrance area look a bit like the Guggenheim in New York and, like Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma and Peter Zumthor, who had already designed so-called “Provisorien” for the opening of the thermal spa in the old spa hotel, transformed the shoebox rooms into suitably chic “rooms for architects”. The “Star” architects were not able to enlarge the 73 guest rooms, which are just 20 square meters in size; only for the suites in 7132 were several of the shoe boxes combined. But there was obviously enough room for a very different design: Zumthor immersed his rooms in bright red and black Stucco Lustro. Thom Mayne also opted for black: he wallpapered the walls, floor and ceiling with Vals quartzite and brightened up the gloom with a neon yellow bath egg. While Kengo Kuma and Tadao Ando worked minimalistically, as expected: Kuma implanted his rooms with a wooden cocoon made of oak, Ando focuses on not distracting from the view. Guests are now spoiled for choice.

The article about the 7132 hotel was published in Baumeister 05/2020.