Urban development

In 1981, the town of Kelkheim advertised a competition to produce an urban design for its new town centre.  Kelkheim was created when several parishes were amalgamated for political reasons, and is consequently an artificial entity of a town.  It was entirely without a focal point.  However, the town did have Frankfurter Strasse, a long, busy shopping street devoid of atmosphere.

The prize-winning proposal was a solution which envisaged a linear centre to be developed parallel to Frankfurter Strasse and largely interconnected with it.  This centre comprised an exciting sequence of different public areas in a variety of forms, qualities and sizes:  a central market ‘square’ (60 x 40 m), then a triangular space and finally an oval area with the town hall and a hotel.

The proposed solution was based on a standardised house type (7.5 m module), which, with its dividing joints, could be varied at will, and was to be designed in different ways on the basis of an underlying design canon using primarily plaster and natural stone.

In the call for submissions, the municipal authority of the City of Kelkheim had set out the major planning challenges of the next 20 years (hotel, town and concert hall, community centre, police station, etc.).  Plans were to be submitted in a scale of up to 1 : 200 (ground plans and elevations), thus carrying the character of an invitation to tender with the result to be actually realised.

The problem with urban development tenders and competitions is translating them into bricks and mortar in structural engineering.  An ideas competition which requires such a detailed approach is no longer concerned with town planning pure and simple, but also with three-dimensional structural design.  Moreover, the local authority took advice from a high-level committee in order to reach the proper decision.

But construction itself, on the other hand, was to proceed without the benefit of expert advice – merely the involvement of some local architects – in accordance with the design vision of the leading lights regarding design, of the local municipal administration.  Certainly, the urban development plan was implemented in terms of its ground plan, but as far as the buildings themselves were concerned, a mediaeval theatre set was created, which was intended to imply a history which had never existed.  The suggestion that a town centre should also have a contemporary element in order to be favoured by the public as well, fell on deaf ears;  instead, it was decided to take refuge in architectural tweeness comprising a mishmash of dormers, an undisciplined panoply of materials and even naturalistic ethnic murals.

The town and the architects were not on the best of terms when they went their separate ways.