Korbach Town Hall

ARGE agn-heimspielarchitekten

34 1035
Window handle

In the autumn of 1996, Düssel­dorf-based in­te­rior de­signer Heike Falken­berg asked FSB to recre­ate an old handle design for a ren­o­va­tion job. Using the sketch she sub­mit­ted, FSB’s de­vel­op­ers milled a pro­to­type out of the FSB 1076 handle. It was re­cently rein­ter­preted by giving it a square rose.

34 1035
Window handle

Destruction with nous

The his­toric town-hall build­ing at Korbach dates back to 1377 and comes com­plete with a statue of Roland, a crow­step gable at the back, an arcade along one side and a pre­pos­sess­ing tower at the front. A flat con­crete struc­ture typical of the age was added in the 1970s that can in ret­ro­spect be said to have failed to enter into any mean­ing­ful sym­bio­sis with the older build­ing. As a jus­ti­fi­able con­se­quence, the ARGE agn-heim­spielar­chitek­ten con­sor­tium has now had the annexe pulled down and re­placed by a new build­ing.

Unlike the 1970s ex­ten­sion, the new build­ing fea­tures both the eave mould­ing and the pointed gable from the me­dieval town hall and suc­ceeds in helping give rise to a co­he­sive en­sem­ble without pan­der­ing to the ex­ist­ing ar­chi­tec­ture. It dif­fi­dently re­frains from steal­ing the ar­chi­tec­tural show from its ven­er­a­ble neigh­bour. The two iden­ti­cal sec­tions to which shape has been lent are of straight­for­ward design, derive crisp struc­ture from their pared-down window align­ments and boast bright façades that blend in well with the Korbach urban land­scape.

The new build­ing stands back some­what rel­a­tive to its ancient coun­ter­part, thus gen­er­at­ing new space at the very heart of the town. The public space laps all the way round the ag­gre­gate body of the town hall, forming alleys and squares that benefit the town at this lo­ca­tion. A glass-roofed cit­i­zens’ forum ma­te­ri­alises in the form of a three-storey air space in the middle of the build­ing on Rathaus­platz whose various gallery levels are also con­ducive to people finding their way around inside.

Architect and Object

Marc Matzken of heim­spielar­chitek­ten and Chris­t­ian Thomann of agn, project man­age­ment for Korbach town hall
© ARGE agn-heim­spielar­chitek­ten

“Any in­ter­ven­tion in­volves de­struc­tion, so destroy with nous” – the ar­chi­tects are fond of quoting the Swiss ar­chi­tect Luigi Snozzi when elu­ci­dat­ing their own un­der­stand­ing of ar­chi­tec­ture.

Building site as urban mine

De­mo­li­tion ac­tiv­i­ties tend to be viewed more crit­i­cally than ever by the public these days. Besides the high levels of CO2 emitted when erect­ing a build­ing and the fact that sup­plies of raw ma­te­ri­als are finite, the waste arising in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try is like­wise a huge problem. It is ac­cord­ingly crucial that top pri­or­ity be given to re­tain­ing as much ex­ist­ing sub­stance as pos­si­ble. Nev­er­the­less, the town-hall annexe at Korbach, a build­ing faced in washed-con­crete slabs, had been fitted with complex air-con­di­tion­ing systems and gen­er­ally ageing tech­ni­cal ser­vices that were in urgent need of being brought in line with current en­ergy-re­lated stip­u­la­tions.

A sus­tain­able concept was sought for the new town-hall build­ing that would serve as a role model for the ef­fi­cient use of ma­te­ri­als in con­struc­tion and was sci­en­tif­i­cally eval­u­ated to this end. Chris­t­ian Thomann and heim­spielar­chitek­ten im­pressed the com­pe­ti­tion jury with their blue­print and the ur­ban-min­ing concept they adopted. This en­vis­aged the old build­ing being used as a source of raw ma­te­ri­als for its suc­ces­sor. At the same time, the new build­ing was put up in such a way as to enable future gen­er­a­tions to take it back down in a “cleanly sorted” manner, hence al­low­ing as much ma­te­r­ial as pos­si­ble to be re­cy­cled.

Design that doesn’t age is like­wise a sus­tain­able asset. The FSB 1035 handle model se­lected by the ar­chi­tects for the town-hall ex­ten­sion at Korbach is already a classic in their eyes: “slick, time­less … - our heim­spiel favourite at the moment!” It was de­signed in 1996 by the in­te­rior de­signer Heike Falken­berg. The office doors in the new ex­ten­sion have been fitted with handles in Stain­less Steel, the alu­minium-and-tim­ber windows with plug-in handles in con­trast­ing Matt Black Alu­minium, both from the same FSB series.

Object Details

Fotos: © Caspar Sessler

Location

Korbach Town Hall

Stech­bahn 1,
34497 Korbach,
Germany

Anfahrt planen