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A deconstruction of the PRORA Block that both dissolves itself into the sky and landscape through reflection and formal ruination, while standing as a bold reinterpretation of a monotonous Nazi object.
DESCRIPTION
The studio in which this project was produced focused on the terms RUIN-ish and LANDSCAPE-ish to tackle new forms of re-use. Kicking socialism with flowers, citing the Chapman brothers water color paintings over Hitler’s artwork, is the means of taking a building with a negative historically loaded past (such as PRORA) and deconstructing it formally and programmatically to create a ruined building that leaves the original meaning and tone behind. This was accomplished through formal moves surrounding REFLECTION. By using a pattern derived from Josef Albers’ work, reflective punctures or protrusions are applied to the facade to break up its monumentality. The reflective portions angle either up or down to reflect the sky and ground, respectively. These are mixed with cuts entirely through the building mass and cuts that show the rear facade visually disrupt the seemingly endless facade and break it down to a more personal scale. Then a color gradient from early studies was introduced onto the facade. This inverts the perception of the ruin; the original facade that still stands takes this new color, such as the application of bright colors to alter the sober mood in the Chapman brothers’ paintings, and creates a “new normal.” The interventions are a ruined concrete that reads as old and worn, whereas the existing reads as the new, the altered. This RUIN-ish aspect of the interventions also applies to the landscape. The pieces that have been removed from the original facade are strewn across the landscape as evident fragments of carving, as well as indenting the landscape itself to create a similar depth existent in the facade. The interior form and ruined landscape are designed to foster parkour, a movement that uses the body to reclaim unused areas for new activity at a human scale. What is now left on the site of a PRORA block is a deconstructed version of the original building that both dissolves itself into the sky and landscape through reflection and formal ruination, while standing as a bold reinterpretation of a monotonous Nazi object.
SCOPE
Adaptive Re-Use, Parkour Park
LOCATION
Rügen, Germany
INSTRUCTOR
Maya Alam