New studio building for fine arts at HBK Braunschweig

Braunschweig, Germany
Competition Entry 2022

Since the 1960s at the latest, the spatial structures of industrial production and spaces for artistic practice have been closely intertwined. Among others, Robert Rauschenberg (Broadway Studio), Andy Warhol (Silver Factory), and Donald Judd (101 Spring Street) appropriated the openness, performative potential, and spatial generosity of post-industrial infrastructures. Martin Kippenberger also exploited similar potentials in his loft in the former warehouse of the Konsumgenossenschaft in Berlin Kreuzberg.

The surroundings of the future studio building of the University of Fine Arts are characterized by commercial and industrial buildings. In this environment, the question inevitably arises as to the potential that industrial references offer today, more than half a century after the original appropriation of existing industrial buildings as places of artistic practice.

Our design makes use of the precast concrete construction method that characterizes today's industrial construction to offer a robust, adaptable, versatile, and cost-effective structure that best meets the wide-ranging spatial requirements for artistic education.