The Productive Heart of Neu Ulm

Team Point of View

The project proposes new connections, porosities, juxtapositions and overlapping functions transforming Vorfeld into a new attractive Heart of Neu Ulm – a central pole within the existing urban constellation. New connections are social, spatial, urban, cultural and environmental. We interpreted the Productive City as a shift from closed to open, from central building to central open space, from Mono-functional to Mixed Architecture. In particular the new relations between learning, production and housing are the main feature of the project for the new identity of the Heart of Neu Ulm, as re-interpreted legacy of the “Ulm School of Design” (HfG, 1953–1968). Finally the project should be developed in flexible phases and always entails the participatory influence of the inhabitants.

Jury Point of View

The strength of the design is in the structural transformation of an existing centre of the district and a focused green corridor with sensible links to the urban core and adjoining open spaces, which are in the position to give the district a new character and identity. The strong architecture proposals for the “new heart of Neu-Ulm” make it possible to concentrate the new uses to the east and west of the locations that have already been constructed vis-à-vis the green corridor, which is given a new density of uses as a result of the accumulation of productive and social areas.