The next aac spring workshop will take place from 3 March to 26 March 2021 on the premises of the Academy for Architectural Culture at Rainvilleterrasse 4 in Hamburg, Germany. We are now looking forward to receiving applications until 11 January 2021.

This year the aac's spring workshop will focus on a new visitor centre for the Kulturforum Berlin.

The term “Kulturforum Berlin” generally refers to the urban ensemble of the Staatsbibliothek and the Philharmonie, built in the 1950s by Hans Scharoun as well as Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie, supplemented by further museum buildings added in the following decades.The Kulturforum was originally created based on the idea of building a new cultural centre in West Berlin on the edge of the Tiergarten, which would complement and counterbalance the historical centre in the eastern part of the city. Despite the important individual buildings, a square or forum character and an identity-forming townscape have never emerged.
 
This unresolved urban planning situation as well as the future development with the expansion of the museum areas and the undeveloped open space in the middle of the Kulturforum next to the St. Matthäus-Kirche were repeatedly the subject of heated discussion in the media and among architects and urban planners. With the winning proposal for the new 20th century museum by Herzog & de Meuron, another decision in regard to it has been made.

Thus, the question of the design of a central entrance building, which allows orientation in the conglomerate of museums, is again being raised.

The so-called Museumsplatz, the area in front of the Gemäldegalerie, will move into the new centre of the Kulturforum due to the elimination of the former central square between St. Matthäus-Kirche and Potsdamer Straße. An upgrading of the entrance situations of all adjoining museums, the creation of a place with service functions such as information, tickets, cloakrooms etc., a starting point for guided tours as well as extension areas for the Kunstgewerbemuseum with attractive gastronomy are to be realised here.

The upcoming spring workshop of the aac Academy for Architectural Culture is again dedicated to this topic. The workshop topic is a reissue from spring 2020, when the topic could not be worked on due to the corona lockdown in Germany.
 
The aim of the workshop is to find a seminal solution for the design of an appropriate entrance area for all museum buildings by dealing with the history of the site and the complex spatial contexts.

In addition, in cooperation with the square next to the St. Matthäus-Kirche, the aim is to strengthen the quality of the open spaces in order to turn the new centre of the Kulturforum into a lively and inspiring square.

A maximum of 16 participants will work on designs in groups of four people. Each team will be accompanied intensively, continuously and personally by an experienced tutor during the entire course. The groups will be mixed internationally in order to enable an intensive exchange between young architects with different cultural backgrounds. The workshop language is English.

The workshop begins with a two-day excursion to Berlin in order to experience the existing situation and the design task on site and to visit further reference objects. Afterwards, proposals will be developed in Hamburg in the rooms of aac on Campus Rainvilleterrasse.