Concrete – reuse

Michał Wiśniewski in conversation with Robert K. Huber

Michał Wiśniewski: Your interest in the heritage of concrete dates back to the times when it was still an unexplored topic. Why did you tackle this challenging material?

Robert K. Huber: This was around 2007 and had several starting points. It included a conceptual art approach with the reuse of existing parts of buildings as “readymades” in connection with the issues of urban design. At that time, especially in East Germany, there were large urban redevelopment projects underway. On the one hand, existing fabric of large housing estates was  torn down to tremendous extent On the other hand, artificial narratives were created to legitimize and promote new projects, which were almost always tabula rasa. At the beginning there was an idea of ​​how to use the existing material that was to be dismantled , which was still of good quality and to transplant it somewhere else and use it to build something new? How can we use the old to build something new by saving energy and building materials? And also in the urbanistic approach, how can we create a kind of urban metabolism, using existing structures and narratives, instead of tearing down and throwing everything away and creating everything again, starting from scratch?

In Munich, where I studied and obtained my diploma, around 2007 the so-called athletes’ village, was to be demolished and rebuilt in a similar, but more dense way and up to date way. The reconstruction project was commissioned to the Bogevischs Buero studio and supervised by Werner Wirsing, the author of the original design of the village. This was an exceptional situation when it comes to the demolition and reconstruction of this type of architectural heritage. The project was completed in 2010. The village was built in 1969, three years before the Olympic Games held in Munich in 1972, with the intention of later use as a dormitory. It is part of the Olympic Village, which should be read as a prototype of modern, futuristic architecture and housing.

I was wondering how we could preserve and reuse the material from demolished small terraced houses and create solitaire houses from their parts, transforming them into performative architecture that can be dismantled and reassembled to be moved to several locations in Munich. It was the first project that we called “transplanting urban fabirc”, in German “Bestandsverpflanzung”.

MW: At Herito, we talk about heritage mainly with historians who focus mainly on facts and aesthetics. I am very happy that I can talk to someone who is interested in modern, concrete architecture from a different design perspective that forces us to think about the future.

RH: It was three different perspectives. The first conceptual one, which included aesthetics. The second is the heritage perspective. Next is the urban perspective, but focused on the material. Comparing the scale and different understandings of the profession, it can be said that we have broken the conventional understanding of architectural design. Starting with methodological research and a very haptic starting point, we approached the urban scale of intervention, from XS to XL, and in between we answered questions about how to deal with a particularly controversial contemporary heritage.

MW: You started dealing with this type of projects very early, before the discussion about the climate catastrophe and the economic crisis of 2008. Back then, we still looked to the future with hope. I was wondering about the attitude of German society towards its concrete heritage then and today. In Poland, concrete still has negative connotations for many people.

RH: This was also a topic of this first project, as it was obvious to us that concrete has negative connotations, especially when it was reused from waste material. The term “concrete” itself is also used as a synonym for something perceived as bad. People will say that all highways and streets are built of concrete, even if it is not concrete but asphalt. They will also say that concrete is too cold to live in, even if this argument results from the method of construction or insulation. Going further, the worst connotation is the “socially bad” perception wrongly associated with large housing estates. It is worth adding that they are not always made of concrete. In Germany, we have our own term, we call it “Platten” for buildings and complexes built of prefabricated reinforced concrete slabs, or even entire housing estates. This term gained negative connotations and has been used to reinforce this bad image for decades.

This perception developed onwards from the beginning of the 21st century and was fostered by intensive urban reconstruction and the demolition of large apartment blocks, which further strengthened the negative image created after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Against this background, the Olympic Village in Munich was perceived positively, at least by a growing audience , with some ups and downs within the past decades. When it was built, it was perceived by many people as a city of the future. It was used as a setting for science fiction films, such as “Rollerball” by Norman Jewison. At the same time, negative associations were growing around it, related to the attack by Palestinian terrorists on Israeli Olympic athletes during the 1972 Games. Over time, it became a place for families, it was appreciated for its car-free space, public traffic is organized underground. The complex includes various types of buildings, from terraced houses to terraces and large blocks of flats, from small apartments to large apartments, with the possibility of being used by representatives of several generations, or as premises shared by students. With this in mind, we understood that we were dealing with something special here, a large modern housing estate that was aging well. In addition, also a very unique situation, the student village was part of the protected heritage site of the Olympic village. On this background, it was decided to dismantle and rebuild the student village, and we had a feeling that this was urban fabric that was destined to be reused and to ask some critical questions with.

Our idea was to (re)use elements of the village as a “built argument” – three small bungalows made of dismantled concrete slabs, reused as” built arguments”, which we allowed to wander around the city and monitored what reaction it caused. On the one hand, people looked at these three concrete bungalows as something from demolition, something dingy, something from the garbage. On the other hand, they read the aesthetics of the Olympic village in them and were very surprised. People remembered these student houses, some people used to live there, and they were known for the murals that had been painted on them over the years.

We worked with this associative dichotomy. On the one hand, it’s garbage, bad, ugly,. On the other it’s historical material ofthe Olympic Village representing a period of blossom for the development of Munich.

We decided to use this dichotomy, this “ready-made” nature of these elements, making it a tool of change. It contains both identities, like both old and new, positive and negative, somehow creating a new value system. It was a performance, not just a reuse of materials, we worked with these associations in an activist and artistic way at the same time.

MW: What year was it?

RH: 2008. First, we installed it in a more outer part  of Munich,  a district related to the post-war development of the city, which also gained a new dimension during the time of the Olympics, and today bears traces of changes at the end of the 20th century. Then we moved them to the a inner city area where the defensive walls were demolished in the 18th century, showing the first expansion of the city. We have thus positioned them in relation to two important stages of Munich’s development. In both cases, we cooperated with local stakeholders or inhabitants, each time encountering different reactions. We worked with the associations of the material, with its two identities, to be waste and a valuable, historical object. Our goal was to initiate a discussion on the contemporary urban transformation present on each site.

This project led us to another project in which we wanted to combine or “unite” West German prefabricated panels with East German panels coming from Frankfurt (Oder). This is how the project “Panel Unification” (“Plattenvereinigung”) was born, established in Berlin in 2010.

MW: How do you see the results of your projects sixteen years later? How has the reception of the panel changed in Germany?

RH: The longer we worked with the topic of ​​reuse, sustainable construction, energy saving and CO2 emission reduction, the more the topic in general gained importance in public perception. I think that today we see a lot of interest in such issues, at least in the need to recycle and reuse. This sensitivity has changed dramatically. But something else is very important. At the beginning, this type of topic was of interest only to a few forward-thinking people, having a special interest in late modern housing or in concrete architecture, like for example some art historians or theoreticians. But even for them, however, concrete slabs itself were still something marginal. Of course, several innovative projects in this area were already implemented, but the negative connotations of slabs was, and is,  still very common.

However, I have the impression that this change in approach is the result of a more “rational” awareness that reuse makes sense because it saves energy and reduces carbon dioxide emissions. Some architects also noticed that this is a way of designing. But another key issue remains. The key question is whether the dominant ways in which the construction sector and development companies operate have changed? The industry still wants to work on a large scale, not necessarily with a huge puzzle of reused parts, each of which is different, and we have to constantly put them together. We’re still not there yet. The second key issue is understanding the fundamental change in our culture. There is still some work to be done. That is why we are increasingly focusing on the topic of the heritage of modernism in general, both its materiality and the information it carries. The concept of “modern reuse” focuses on a future-proof change to dominant behaviors and dominant design modes.

MW: Let’s now talk about the BHROX bauhaus reuse pavilion in Berlin. Could you explain where the idea came from to dismantle the glass wall of the Bauhaus building in Dessau and reuse it to create a new structure in the middle of Ernst-Reuter-Platz, a key roundabout in the western part of the German capital?

RH: This project had different origin. Basically, looking at it in an analytical way, it started from a similar point and grew out of a situation of historical change. In the GDR, Bauhaus was out of fashion for years. But this changed towards 1976 in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the Bauhaus building in Dessau, when the GDR began to adopt the Bauhaus heritage. It might have been no coincidence that pre-fabricated construction was used on a wider scale at that time – this was reflected in large housing estates in eastern Germany, for example Marzahn-Hellersdorf, where in the late 1970s industrial construction in the GDR entered the peak period of its development. Without recognizing the Bauhaus as, say, part of the state’s identity, it could have created an ideological vacuum or a gap in the narrative created by the departure from socialist realism and the transition to the industrial production of housing buildings. When, in 1976, the remnants of the war damage were finally cleared and the Bauhaus building in Dessau was reopened, an exhibition was organized with a slogan that read something like “Socialism and Bauhaus go hand in hand, always and forever.”

Nearly thirty-five years later, we reused the material from the facade of the building from 1976, from the northern facade and from the facades of the atelier buildings. In fact, it was the material that was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996. We were happy about the fact that these were not elements from 1926. The material used was perfect for telling a contemporary story of reuse. After building a small test pavilion at Tempelhof Airfield, we got the opportunity to build the  “bauhaus reuse”next to  the Bauhaus Archive building, which was Gropius’ last work.

After the time at the Bauhaus Archive, from a storytelling perspective, there was no better location than Ernst-Reuter-Platz, the “shopwindow” of West Berlin during the Cold War. In contrast to Karl-Marx-Allee on the eastern side, Ernst-Reuter-Platz was a pendant for prestigious companies such as IBM, Osram, Telefunken. The large roundabout was a mirror image for Strausberger Platz to the east.

The BHROX bauhaus reuse on Ernst-Reuter-Platz is also an act of transplanting urban fabric and, but more of architectural heritage.

MW: I like this difference in scale – we have a large roundabout with a small glass building in the middle. You have all these big skyscrapers around, and this pavilion is relatively small, so its history, so dense, so intense, creates a completely new meaning for the heritage of modernism. I have a question related to this. While browsing the German entries on the UNESCO World Heritage List, I discovered that modern objects are relatively well represented there. I am curious how the unique, universal value of this architectural trend is understood in Germany in relation to the concept of heritage.

RH: We have six modern sites on the UNESCO list: of course there is the Bauhaus with Weimar and Dessau, inscribed in 1996, and with Bernau added in 2017. There are six modern housing estates in Berlin, listed in 2008. There is Essen and the Zollverein complex inscribed in 2001. The Fagus shoe factory in Alfeld, registered in 2011. Stuttgart’s Weißenhof, which is part of the transnational inscription of Le Corbusier’s heritage, inscribed in 2016. And we also have Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt listed in 2021. For comparison, in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe, only three structures of this type were appreciated in this way: the Tugendhat Villa in Brno in the Czech Republic, inscribed in 2001, the Centennial Hall in Wrocław, inscribed in 2006, and the modernist buildings of Kaunas, inscribed in 2023. We need to consider where this disparity comes from. Recently, a proposal was presented to include Karl-Marx-Allee in the eastern part of Berlin and Hansaviertel in the west on the UNESCO List. In my opinion, this was a very valuable idea for an Eastern-Western-Modern entry on the World Heritage List. Unfortunately, it was rejected. However, the proposal did not include Ernst-Reuter-Platz, probably because there were too many changes there, even though the site and most of the buildings are protected as monuments.

This brings me back to your question. I wonder whether these criteria are still valid and relevant today, especially in the case of the heritage of modernism. Maybe we could look at it from a different perspective? For instance for Ernst-Reuter-Platz, perhaps the most important question should not be whether the current state of the protected heritage is no longer original – this place has become a “conglomerate of modernism”. I think the conglomerate in many significant cases is authentic modernism or modern heritage. Very rarely do we experience modern heritage as pure as it was once intended. For example, if you look at Bernhard Hermkes’s 1955 urban plan for Ernst-Reuter-Platz and compare it with his last building, the Faculty of Architecture building at the Technical University of Berlin, completed in 1968, you will find that it looks different than the plan originally intended. Part of modern heritage is that it embraces change, because often it was not built in the uniform or radical way that was initially planned.

Ernst-Reuter-Platz is a “conglomerate of modernism” combining old and new buildings from the late 19th century, as well as several stages of the development of modernism in the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s. We enter the local roundabout with GDR facade from the Bauhaus headquarters in Dessau, as a temporal symbiosis of two different modern heritage, – of which we cannot say whether these façade elements are still UNESCO world heritage  or not; whether they are protected heritage or not; or if they are of any value under such criteria or not? This is exactly an example, or proof, or test of what is heritage and what is not; what is authentic and what is not; what is valuable and what is not. In conclusion, and given our understanding of “modern reuse” and circularity, I think we need to think about redefining the concept of Outstanding Universal Value regarding the understanding of originality, perhaps it should include the valuable history of change.

MW: The term you are talking about comes from the 1970s. I think it’s time to reconsider its meaning. We live in the 21st century. I was wondering how this pavilion is received in Berlin? Many events take place inside, and the roundabout has become a living place. Did this project meet your expectations?

RH: Well, its implementation was a big challenge, although we were invited there, we entered a place about which there was a wide debate. On the one hand, there were calls to transform the entire space into something pre-modern. The people who voted for this were obviously not satisfied with anything supporting the existing values of the site; they claimed that it was an abandoned place that no one liked and no one used, so it has to disappear. The second group were defenders of the modern heritage who believed that our project may be the first time the “protective shield” has been broken. Then their opponents would respond: “Well, the pavilion already exists. Now we can tear down the entire complex and rebuild a 19th-century city.” The challenge for us was how to explain the mission of the BHROX bauhaus reuse to protect the heritage of modernism, which includes both preserving materiality and creating conditions for recognizing its value and to foster its appreciation. In the end, I think our venture was a success because it emphasizes the  qualities of this place, enhances its values ​​and indicates various possibilities of  the place as a both a modern heritage monument and a vital public space. But it also signals the problem of efforts to maintain a public space dominated by traffic. So BHROX bauhaus reuse  serves  as another “built argument” in the urban debate.

MW: The University of Technology and the School of Architecture are located nearby. How is the topic of reuse received in the German academic community?

RH: It’s everywhere, it has become one of the most talked about issues. It wasn’t like this when we started. When I suggested this topic for my diploma thesis, 80 percent of professors said: “Your diploma may be your last freely creative project before entering the job market, with its routines, regulations, and boring details. Why are you dealing with old concrete?” Now, writing master’s theses and dealing with the circular city and circular construction economy is fashionable.

MW: I think your works are provocative, in some way avant-garde in relation to current events.

RH: It would be nice to hear someone say, “You had a hand in building awareness.” We probably did. People who are aware of our work probably had it in mind in their own projects, which in my opinion is inevitable – this is how culture develops. Well, it was a difficult and bumpy time when our topic was not recognized yet. For example, it’s a funny story, in 2011 I was asked what was so special about reused Bauhaus windows? It was thought that we reuse windows from a popular German chain of home improvement stores with that name. This of course changed after the school from Dessau became widely known during its centenary in 2019. But, this anniversary also revealed or recalled another important topic, the lack of knowledge, awareness and appreciation for the legacy of modernism, especially in the context of its transnational development in Central Europe.

MW: You are participating in the European Commission’s flagship project, the “New European Bauhaus”, touted as the future of the continent. I see it as an opportunity to change the narrative and create a new discourse on architecture. Could you tell us more about this initiative, your approach to it and its future?

RH: I agree with you – this is something important. However, one can argue whether this is the correct terminology or whether Bauhaus is synonymous with the entire idea of ​​modernism. On the other hand, it can be a very useful password, it requires no explanation. And as any other name will surely cause discussions, too, it might be of advantage that the term Bauhaus in combination with Europe actually leads right into the right debates – as mentioned before, like about the actual transnational genesis of Modernism. Moving on to the project itself, it provides a lot of information about sustainable development or the Green Deal and formulates burning questions about the future. Of course, we talk a lot about sustainable construction, reuse, recycling, circularity and so on. However, I have the impression that we should also discuss the roots of modernism and its relevance for the present and future questions. That is why we have recently established an official laboratory project for the New European Bauhaus, based on the movement for the “ETOM – European Triennial of Modernism”, called “ETOM NEB-Lab”, initiated by BHROX bauhaus reuse with KÉK – Hungarian Center for Contemporary Architecture, ICOMOS International, National Gallery Prague, Slovak Design Center, Estonian Academy of Arts, Architects’ Council of Europe and buschfeld.com.

Modernism has much greater contributions to development and diversity, and the history of its reception or interpretation is characterized by a transnational perspective. This is what we want to emphasize: modernism is trans-European phenomenon, and this is especially important for a Central European understanding. We address three potentials and research directions. The first potential is the richness and diversity of the modern heritage, in terms of built heritage and legacy of ideas as well as emphasizing its pluralism . We must fight the prejudices that say that modernism is a single-issue, technocratic, purely functionalist movement. Potential number two comprises the protagonists’ stories and transnational biographies, including a special focus on female protagonists, and as well the today’s actors who take care of the heritage, pursue topics across borders and explore and examine its different approaches and examples. The third potential course of action is to unlock the existing relevance of modern ideas and values  to important contemporary questions and future challenges. This is true for all issues related to the structural changes that occurred from the 19th to the 20th century are still present in the structural changes of the post-industrial age today. The foundation of modern states and democratic societies at the beginning of the 20^th century, today is present in the current   fights for social justice or gender equality. The still existing  housing problem, once caused by the large structural changes  in the era of industrialization, today is represented by the struggle achieve both affordable and sustainable housing and urban living conditions.

We should focus on these three areas and answer the questions: How can we make the legacy of modernism productive as a “progressive heritage”, relevant to our contemporary challenges and future transformations? These problems need to be addressed more consistently and in a transnational context, especially in Central Europe, contributing to European social equality and the green transition.B

MW: Finally, I would like to ask, how do you see the future of the use of concrete?

RH: On the one hand  concrete is surely a great polluter, producing very large amounts of emissions. On the other hand, it is a great building material from which a large part of the existing housing stock was built. That’s why I think reusing it is a smart move. Concrete is certainly still the main material for the construction industry. I don’t know how sustainable the use of wood on a large scale can be. For concrete, the future will likely more sustainable based on the idea of ​​reuse. Concrete can become circular. But, of course, concrete slabs need to be developed further, for instance to be lighter and less energy-intensive.

MW: In this sense, “Plattenbau” is not the past, it is also the future.

RH: Definitely and regardless of the material. I think that the future will be informed components that operate in a closed loop and are flexible to be (re)used in different ways, with a long life cycle perspective. So, yes, slabs are part of the future of architecture.