Lost but never forgotten

On the occasions travelling with my fellow colleagues at White Arkitekter to places all over the world (back in the days) we often discussed recent projects. Not sure why especially lost competitions seemed to gain a special attention in these casual moments of reflection. So, let’s look back at some lost proposals, while I am moving forward.

Architecture competitions.

Compared to direct commissions where you try to fulfil the expectations the client in the best possible way, competitions allow for an architectural design in a pure form: without unnecessary compromises, the team tries to find the edge that hopefully will convince the client to choose the proposal - and not the ones of the competitors. Once chosen, the project has a special force on its way to getting built. A wonderful example is “Sara Kulturhus” by that was the winner of an anonymous international competition. Today it is a symbol for contemporary timber architecture.

Project “Xylon” was a competition we did in 2020 at iCampus in Munich. The new typology of a timber-concrete hybrid structure had just started to become of interest for office buildings. In the middle of the pandemic, we also wanted to design a building with a healthy atmosphere that fosters the wellbeing of its users, by exposing timber as much as possible while offering generous coworking spaces for everyone, in order to make the office a desirable meeting place that by far exceeds the home office in quality – something that is still a relevant question today.

The competition for “B14 / Kulturmeile Stuttgart” in 2020 in collaboration with ORANGE BLU building solutions was also influenced by the pandemic: “if we can change our behavior from one day to another because of a virus, it must be possible to change mobility and hence the city center in the same way.” The challenge was to reduce up to 10 lanes of a central city highway to a local street. We chose to act locally by including existing property owners to renovate and add to their properties rather to focus on mainly new construction. Together with a strong investment into public space as a connecting agent for urban placemaking the proposal suggested a future that would be developed slowly over time.

Our proposal for “Bildungscampus Gallus” in Frankfurt in 2022 suggested a “radical reuse approach”: by not replacing an existing school, library and sports hall with a new school, library and sports hall – we rather suggested to transform and add to the existing building structure. Apart from the special character fragments of the old would gain within the new design, the existing campus needed no new identity: it already exists in the urban fabric and that is a great value to preserve.

Finally, in 2023 we designed the proposal "Lili am See" at Seestadt Aspern in Vienna together with DIETRICH UNTERTRIFALLER . The mixed-use development with 25% commercial and 75% residential focuses on a lively public space, active non-residential ground floors with both commercial and cultural spaces like ateliers or community centers. The residential towers are designed as timber-concrete hybrid structures with a rational layout and a high level of prefabrication. ?A special feature where the private green spaces on both the ground floor alleys and the roof top gardens.

All four projects will never be built, but they continue in my thoughts where they keep on inspiring me when I meet new challenges. To all the winners: congratulations, you deserve it! ?

PS: One exception is the beautiful residential timber high-rise with an innovative short-stay long-stay community concept we proposed to be built in Kista north of Stockholm in 2017. Back then we still had to argue that wood buildings don’t burn more than old buildings. The winning proposal was never realized – so I feel this one is still up for grabs! ?