Award for the House of Spore Initiative: Awarded in the entry lane

It fills the decades of the entry lane to Tempelhof Airport, as if the light mast on the street, which must be preserved as a monument, has always been part of it. It does not appear to be old or exaggerated, but independently and yet fitting for this rather rough environment.

The Spore Initiative is an event center and a public space, from high quality to the idiosyncratic formation of the concrete ceilings on the ground floor, which both map the load distribution as well as the namesal “spores”. The recently published German architecture yearbook writes about this, which, like every year, offers a cross -section through the construction process in this country and from local architectural teams.

The foreclosure, conversion and careful addition to a long time continued, with impressive examples such as the cultural weaving mill in the Brandenburg Finsterwalde by Habermann Architecture, an office from Berlin as well as AFF.

Also outstanding is the as careful as the powerful renovation of the Christuskirche in Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate by Brückner & Brückner, in which in this case the sacred role of the building was not given up, but on the contrary was revised. The architecture firm based in Tirschenreuth and Würzburg had already received undivided recognition the year before with the renovation of the Diocesan Museum Freising.

As significant as it is to deal with the existing building fabric – it will probably make up the majority of all construction orders in the future – one wanted from this most important German architecture prize for recently completed projects to continue to put the heavyweight on new creations.

Perhaps more should be differentiated in the future after new construction and conversion. If the new building then succeeds as in Hermannstrasse, namely using bricks from demolition houses, you also have something like the ecologically correct use of materials. That couldn’t be more contemporary.