saai | Archive for Architecture and Engineering

Competition town centre
1965-1966

+203

Competition town centre

The city of Castrop-Rauxel was planning a new cultural and administrative centre with a town hall, health department, multi-purpose building and sports hall. The key idea behind the design was to erect halls with a spatial structure of pergola-like constructions into which the required buildings with their various functions were to be built. As a spatial structure, they were to form a large, overarching architectural form that avoids any emphasis on one of the buildings and unifies the building cubes. Cor-Ten steel was envisaged as the material for the hall construction, while the fixtures could have been built in lightweight and less weather-resistant materials once the halls were erected. In order to revitalise the town centre, particular importance was attached to gastronomy. The town hall canteen was planned in the middle of the complex next to a restaurant, which was also connected to the theatre and multi-purpose building via a smoking foyer and was intended to form a social hub for the town. The plan was to open up the centre mainly via the street to the north and two squares with different levels - the entrance square and the town hall square - and to route pedestrian and vehicular traffic on separate levels.

Immo Boyken, „Entwurfscharakteristika im Werk von Egon Eiermann aus der Zeit nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg“ , Diss., Universität Karlsruhe, Fakultät Architektur, Teil III, S. 266