Flora on Canvas / E12

Adaptable City - Kaiserslautern - From Mono-Large To Multi-Mix

The principal objective of this project is to convert the Pfaff site into a socially and architecturally vibrant urban space.

Situated in a development zone that has conserved its industrial buildings, the site retains clearly legible traces of its history. They are identifiable in imposing limestone buildings from the early 1900s, and large buildings from the 1930s and ‘50s filling the large voids between older buildings.

The sum of these buildings defines the primary axes and dominant characteristics of the site, cut longitudinally and transversally by a grid of historical roads. The site is connected to the rest of the city by the large artery of Königstraße, running from the centre toward the south-west into the technological and university zone. Despite this, it lacks any functional relations with the rest of the city. What makes it a potentially key site, however, is the fact that the area is surrounded by diverse zones, each characterised by a prevalent use: the residential quarter, the healthcare zone and the university campus.

The concept sets out from here, developing on two levels approached in parallel, though differently.

A lower plate articulated by an orthogonal grid is generated by the rhythms of historical traces recognisable on the site in a fusion of ancient and modern patterns. This network hosts large buildings primarily containing the functions of the technology hub.

The upper level is instead born of the transposition onto the site of the urban influences exercised by the local context. Here the city creates a rupture, or better yet, a fragmentation, of compact buildings to form a dispersive network. Buildings of different heights unfold in two principal directions: a residential axis and a technological-cultural axis that respond to adjacent urban functions.

This overlapping of matrices gives the upper volumes a constantly different relationship with those below them. The result is a vertical mix found across the entire master plan, comprised of buildings hosting functions that foster continuous use throughout the day.

While the two layers have distinct origins and forms, they interact to compose something unique, affirming unity through diversity. This system materialises a sort of flora: like natural vegetation, which appears irregular and disorderly at the large scale, and regular and accurately proportioned at the smaller scale. Public spaces is found across the entire site. Urban life penetrates into the old industrial area and interacts with buildings at different levels, increasing the functional mix obtained from the constant contamination between open and closed spaces, built spaces and landscaped areas.