10m2 Stadt - 10m2 City
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
In two weeks, 17 students from the Chair of Urban Design build an experimental wooden structure - a solar parklet. It fits exactly on a single parking spot. The building material is recycled wood, the energy supply is self-sufficient. The project is called "10 m2 City" and creates the first piece of campus on a desolate parking lot as a qualitative meeting space, a place for learning and working.
Geographical Scope
Project Region
Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Description of the project
Summary
A piece of the city instead of a parking lot!
In a two-week workshop, 17 students from the bachelor's and master's degree programs in architecture and urban studies designed and built a test space for alternative uses of the campus parking lot. By upcycling wood and sails, a pavilion was created as a sustainable place to gather: deconstructable, reusable, and self-sufficient in energy by the use of donated solar panels. With a footprint of ten square meters, this solar pavilion, called ‘Parklet’ fits exactly on a single parking space, thus giving the unused area a meaningful use - as an outdoor workspace, a campus lounge, or simply a place to sit for a break.
Its architecture combines sustainable building and renewable energy, timber and high-tech, and the fun of designing and building together. The pavilion is a workplace, a sundeck, a bar, a break room, an event venue, a stage. On ten square meters, a lively urban space has been created - and an idea of how a dreary parking place can be transformed into an active university campus.
With ‘10m2 City’ we want to demonstrate the potential of the space wasted with parking lots. At the same time, the project is a practical exercise in corporate sustainable building and hands-on architectural teaching, combining recycled building materials with the latest in high-tech solar energy.
Key objectives for sustainability
100% recycled timber, 15l of natural linseed oil, 24m2 of recycled sail and six solar panels
Recycled waste timber as constructing material
The parklet is built from waste timber donated by local Thuringian timber suppliers. The timber is reclaimed, the construction is demountable, and the material is reusable. Students learn to think in cycles and to plan sustainably with raw materials. The donated wood is inventoried, and the different types of wood are tested for quality and usability. The design is shaped by the available material. Through planning and cutting to size, the heterogeneous collection of different types of wood is transformed into a uniform building material. To protect the wood from the weather, it is impregnated with natural linseed oil. Shading elements are made from old sails.
Energy production as an element of design
The solar energy system becomes an element of design. It consists of six solar panels, batteries, an inverter, and the associated electrical system. In collaboration with the Dresden based company Solarwatt, a design is created that shows how energy generation and architecture grow together. The integrated photovoltaics provide a self-sufficient power supply that is not connected to the university buildings. The solar panels, which are visible from all sides, form a small tower and at the same time the roofing. An energy management system directs the solar power to the two batteries or directly to the consumers. The charging status of the batteries and the current power consumption can be read via an integrated display or via Bluetooth. The system provides enough renewable energy to run two laptops and a beamer or to charge four e-bikes.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Sustainability needs to get capturing images. Recycling shall not be regarded as working with worn-out second-rate leftovers for less important purposes, but as an exciting and striking transformation of materials to give them new value and make them shine again. Before, the square timber for the pavilion was dirty and crooked, afterwards it was straight and clean with a nice honey-like color, wonderful smelling of linseed oil. For all participants the process of manually upgrading the timber produced a kind of magic and became a lasting experience.
Making solar panels an integral part of a new architecture is another challenge of green transformation. Through solar power, buildings become small power plants, redefining the modernist’s creed of a house as a machine. The Bauhaus meant to amplify state-of-the-art industrial products and production and formed a modern aesthetic with new materials and new constructions. Today, environmental technologies will and must define new architectural images. Solar panels should not be awkward additions but proudly presented elements of 21st century’s aesthetics, that reflect smart solutions and strategies to fight climate change.
Key objectives for inclusion
Public space instead of parking
Focal point of this project is to activate and upgrade unused public space while creating awareness for sustainable and social urban developments. The pavilion illustrates the value and necessity of public open space that is accessible for everyone. Instead of an asphalted area, reserved for cars, the pavilion offers students and citizens of Weimar as well as children and tourists a place to meet, exchange, work or just relax. Especially during the pandemic, this covered outdoor meeting space allowed students and neighbors to meet with a considerable low risk of infection. Besides its everyday function several workshops and events such as a bike repair workshop, a pottery course, movie nights and a car free sports and urban activity day were organized. Just by standing in the middle of the mostly vacant plot, the pavilion attracts attention and leads to all kinds of activities. On the weekends children use it as a playground, in the evening young people as a hang out. Students and staff of the adjacent institutes and faculties make it a place for celebrations or just plain-air meetings. The sockets invite everyone to charge their mobiles or computers for free, thus establishing a feeling of being welcomed.
The interdisciplinary organized design and building process of the pavilion included local, regional, and international expertise. The participants of the workshop were supported by a local carpentry practice, got input from a Japanese architect specialized in wood construction and collaborated with a regional based solar energy company.
Results in relation to category
The project demonstrates, how sustainable building methods and the integration of renewable energy production can be combined in a highly aesthetic manner.
During the process students learned how to work with limited access to materials and how to upcycle waste materials (timber, sail). Furthermore, the integration of renewable energy into the design and planning process was practiced.
The little building stands in the larger context of a tactical urbanism. The build structure demonstrates alternative uses of unused or misused public space. It creates awareness for the shortage of qualitive urban space since in average more than 80% of the public space in urban areas is reserved for cars. The pavilion makes people think about the huge parking space, when they sit in the middle of the asphalt sealed open area. It changes the perception of the status quo and leads to phantasies about what this place could be. Visitors would say: "I didn’t even know this space existed”, or “What a waste”, or “Why so much space for only a few cars”. This question even led to a well-documented research project by a student, who went into the university archives to learn about the reasons the large parking space was planned in the first place.
Part of the tactical urbanism concept are parties, events and gatherings that are organized around the pavilion and each time cover half of the parking space. Filling wasteland with live feels good for everyone and gives an air of doing something uncommon or even slightly illegal while doing entirely the right thing. Standing around on the spot, talking with fellow students or colleagues makes people believe, that spaces like the car park really can be changed.
The nearby faculty of media made extensive use of the pavilion and now helps to grant an afterlife for the building. Originally conceived as a temporary object that can be dismantled and transformed into something new, it will soon be moved to the faculty’s new premises and will there hope
How Citizens benefit
Prior to the design and building phase, the students surveyed and interviewed fellow students, employees of the university as well as neighbors of the neighborhood about their needs and wishes for the campus area as a public space.
The most important elements defined were sitting possibilities, a roof and access to power supplies. Based on these results the design for a pavilion was created, combining functional needs with a new aesthetic of sustainable design.
During the evaluation period of eight months students and citizens are invited to use and take in possession the pavilion and its surroundings.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
The project is innovative because it teaches content and methodology through a participatory design process and offers the opportunity to learn from the real participation, planning and construction process. In this way, the themes of sustainable urbanism are applied to the campus. The biggest innovation is that the open space on campus is no longer used just by cars, but for students and neighbors.
The campus itself as a place of shared learning, where new approaches are developed, becomes an object of observation, a test bed, a laboratory, an application case. Tactical urbanism means to focus on experimentation, testing, and the simple, provisional, but also direct conversion of the campus.
An important measure regarding a climate-neutral and sustainable campus is the replacement of a large part of the asphalted and sealed parking areas with high-quality green and open spaces for students and citizens of Weimar. The pavilion makes people stare at the insanity of the hermetically sealed surface and hopefully helps to provide new insight - that this is wrong, that it must be changed and can be changed.
Learning transferred to other parties
This project can function as a Best Practice Example for a temporary transformation of unused public space or parking places as well as an example for a practical exercise in sustainable building, combining recycled building materials with modern technology. It already proved its impact: a few months after completion, another group of students adopted the idea, raised money, and built a second pavilion as a workspace for students, right in front of the university’s main building.