Faculty of Arts & Society

Architecture, Landscape & Design

Architecture students trip to Frankfurt

The area of study was the Frankfurt/Stuttgart/ Darmstadt region of Germany. We chose these three cities as they each offered different experiences, Frankfurt's renaissance in cultural buildings began 25 years ago and is continuing at a pace, completely transforming the architectural ambition of the city. Buildings visited included works by Foster, Meier, Behnisch, Fuksas, Hollein, Ungers, Kleihues and others. The journey to Stuttgart allowed us to visit the Mies van der Rohe Competition site at Weissenhof where the recently restored Le Corbusier worker's house has been opened as a gallery and museum explaining the development of the estate. The architects who built there included Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Scharoun, Oud, Gropius and Behrens. 

In Stuttgart we visited UN Studio's Mercedes Museum and the Porsche Museum, both opened this year and offering a good reflection of diverse thinking in Museum Architecture. We also had chance to visit Stirling's Statdsgallerie which along with Hans Holleins MOMA in Frankfurt and his gallery in Munchengladbach represented good examples of Post Modernism.

We have contacts at the schools of architecture in Koblenz and Wurzberg as well as contacts working in housing renewal schemes in the Darmstadt Area, and they arranged for visits to the Darmstadt Institute of Technology to view the 'Solar House' winner of the 2007 competition for energy efficient housing, the Passive Haus Institute and a recently built co-operative residential unit. We also visited the Matildahode Park in Darmstadt famous for the Jungen Stijl Housing

Our return to England via Coach allowed us to visit the Zollverein Landscape Park at Essen, the industrial heritage of the area taking on an almost archaeological value within a new landscape. We ended the day by visiting the Aalto Concert Hall...superb!