The student house designed by architects Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke not only provides the Technical University of Braunschweig with a new drawing room for the architecture faculty, as originally planned; their concept, which won a competition among academic staff, is also now available to all students as a versatile place for meeting and learning on the central campus. The filigree, two-storey steel skeleton construction is functional, while the transparent shell of the new building is inviting. The interior is dominated by an open space that offers various zones for group work, seminars or spontaneous exchanges, thus complementing the university's existing room typologies. Apart from the building core, which houses the sanitary facilities and café, there are no walls at all. The same applies to central access areas, so that all areas can be reached like islands via a network of stairs and walkways. Should the requirements for the building change at some point, the design also allows for flexible restructuring of the floor plans and even complete dismantling of the bolted construction elements, thus counteracting possible obsolescence.

Statement of the jury

In their collaboration on the new student union building for the Technical University of Braunschweig, Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke (both from Berlin) have succeeded in finding an answer to the needs of post-pandemic everyday university life. While numerous lectures and presentations now take place online, the new building provides a meeting place and a sense of identity for students and teachers from all degree programmes. A special feature is that the space is designed entirely without hierarchical order, thus presenting a counter-model to the familiar academic context of lecture halls, for example. The consistent integration of sustainability principles is impressive: the structure, which consists of only a few different components, can not only be redesigned or expanded in the event of changing requirements, but the steel-wood hybrid construction and the modular façade can also be dismantled into individual parts and reused elsewhere. Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke have taken the opportunity to make a strong statement for the architecture industry of the future in a competition that deliberately promotes young talent. Their design demonstrates a refreshing radicalism that is often lacking in established designers. For the implementation, they chose the collaborative form of a consortium – a way for young architects in particular to gain experience with more comprehensive projects and ultimately greater visibility.

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