Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Bremen, Germany, reuse, artifact, syntax, Kaufhalle Bremen am Brill, abandoned, disuse

The Kaufhalle Bremen am Brill in Bremen, Germany, dating back to the early 60’s resists easy categorization. It is neither a historical monument nor a particularly outstanding work of architecture, as they state at Barkow Leibinger.  At the same time as an existing urban artifact there remains a compelling latency as it stands abandoned and in disuse. There was an ambition that materially, formally and syntactically begs consideration – what is the value of this building as found?

Rather than assimilating this architecture-artifact into a completely new order, new syntax, central approach to this project was to ask: could one tease out a third condition where critical renovation allows both orders to co-exist to achieve something both startling and unexpected. This projects looks at a context that could offer something generational in a very real and physical way. While this could be an urban setting, a site, or a landscape in this case, it is the existing building itself, which is suggestive.

Rather than subsuming it, the strategy is to react to it. In reacting there is the chance for doing something. Therefore in Barkow Leibinger they find themselves using tools that have to do with a particular action such as selecting, clearing, stacking onto, connecting and wrapping. This work becomes suddenly objective, free from intuition, free from infinite choices. It sets forth the possibility for a new order where both condition the historical and the speculative can merge allowing both legibility. In a performative sense all of these activities begin to have a status. They unify the building; they construct a new system for façade, providing new types and hierarchies of space.

Strategically resembling a merging of “pimp my ride” with the wrappings of Christo what eventually emerges is a condition that can be both, familiar and strange, homogeneous and heterogeneous, sublime and awkward.

Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Bremen, Germany, reuse, artifact, syntax, Kaufhalle Bremen am Brill, abandoned, disuse

Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Bremen, Germany, reuse, artifact, syntax, Kaufhalle Bremen am Brill, abandoned, disuse

Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Bremen, Germany, reuse, artifact, syntax, Kaufhalle Bremen am Brill, abandoned, disuse

Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Bremen, Germany, reuse, artifact, syntax, Kaufhalle Bremen am Brill, abandoned, disuse

 

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