An innovation centre for the anthropogenic stock

From residual materials to recyclable materials “We are surrounded by a man-made anthropogenic stock of over 50 billion tonnes of materials.” (German Federal Environmental Agency – UBA) Many of these raw materials are bound up within our cities and our infrastructure. Many of them are stored as ‘waste materials’ in our landfills. And this stock keeps growing by ten tonnes per person each year. It represents a huge potential to meet our future resource needs. In the future, we will need to become aware of this ‘treasure’ and intelligently reintegrate it into new recyclable material cycles. The resource campus in Minden-Lübbecke provides an opportunity to demonstrate the potential of this raw material stock. Our concept shows how this can be achieved at different scales, in a symbiosis between primary and secondary raw materials and closely linked to nature. The landfill site becomes an active cultural landscape that can be a provider of resources, showing how the landscape, raw materials and nature can all be jointly managed within a dynamic transformation process, while at the same time increasing biodiversity. In the process, residual materials become recyclable materials and, along with the raw materials themselves, the location is upgraded and reintegrated into the environment as a public space. The innovation campus – research, experience, learn Urban development – upgrading and reintegration The building complex comprises of the innovation centre, workshop and recycling road, forming a ‘campus square’ that faces the landfill. As a new organisational centre, it acts as a hub and orientation point on the site. The buildings are shaped like a bracket, formed by the ‘cells’ of the landscape and corresponding with them. In the heterogeneous environment of buildings with different uses and from different eras, the autonomous structure creates a new point of identification, while adding carefully and sustainably to the stock. All the new buildings are unobtrusive in terms of structure and act as mediators between the existing buildings, the people who work there and the general public.

Building

A flexible use approach applies to all the buildings, which follow a clear, basic grid principle. A ‘classic’ modular character has been intentionally avoided. in favour of developing an ‘organic campus’. The buildings are available for a variety of uses, conversion and new uses. Along with the current room layout, they define the state of the current needs but are also are constructed in such a way as to allow flexible conversion without generating waste.