The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning

Research Project: Future of the building stock – Development prospects for key historic buildings

Project briefing

Within the funding districts of the Urban Development Support programme, the research project examined municipal’ approaches to historically valuable key buildings in urgent need of intervention. Feasibility studies conducted locally created new possibilities in terms of urban planning, building use and occupancy. Working alongside the Länder and external experts, the project team selected the showcase projects and provided evidence-based advice and support. The aim was to deliver practical insights that are highly transferable to other key historic buildings.

Background

Historic building stock stemming from various layers of history defines the visual character of our towns, cities, and communities. It serves as an identity-creating anchor for local residents and can also be an important factor in defining the area as a business or tourist location.

Individual historic buildings and architectural ensembles play a vital role in individual urban areas, where they have a key function for the development of the immediate surroundings due to their impact on the local visual character, their role in creating local identity and their influence on urban planning. They may be larger buildings like churches, schools, railway stations, industrial complexes, administration buildings and swimming pools, but can also be within enclosed developments – prominent corner buildings, for example. In the present context, this comprises building stock from various eras up until 1970; it may be under heritage protection, of high conservation value, or a long-standing architectural presence that defines the visual character of the town or city.

Objective

Preserving and developing this historic building stock is a political goal that has been enshrined, among other places, in the Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities and now also in the New Leipzig Charter. Against this backdrop, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community and the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) launched a research project set to continue over several years. The project helped refine the Urban Development Support programme as whole; it underlined the importance of key buildings to all Urban Development Support programmes, defined and classified funding and support needs for key buildings across Germany, and developed tangible future support prospects for selected showcase projects. The key to the success of the project was the willingness of the Länder and municipalities to get involved.

In keeping with this, the project team looked into how municipalities handle key historic buildings that require urgent intervention and are located in Urban Development Support neighbourhoods (and districts) that are subject to contraction or growth.

The project began by evaluating completed projects that were innovative in their thinking on combining building preservation, use of funding, municipal practice and stakeholder involvement, use/occupancy plans and neighbourhood development – and that had implemented these ideas successfully. The completed showcase projects were chosen to highlight the following issues and factors: the importance of historically valuable key buildings to neighbourhood development in the context of growth and contraction; successfully deployed strategies, instruments, and procedures; the constellation of stakeholders; financing; and the broader contexts and environments within which funding was provided.

Based on this, the project team selected six showcase projects in Urban Development Support programme areas and provided them with evidence-based advice and support. This was done in close cooperation with the Länder, which submitted proposals for showcase projects to the Federal Government. The shortlist of showcase projects from the various Urban Development Support programmes was compiled by a panel of experts.

For the planned showcase projects, the aim was to conduct research into development concepts for key historic buildings in need of urgent intervention, with a particular emphasis on defining future prospects for the neighbourhoods in which they are located; the project team thus spent six months (January to June 2021) preparing feasibility studies for each key building, focusing on pinpointing the urban and architectural interrelationships of the key buildings and the development prospects that can be derived from these interrelationships. The aim was to develop strategies for the following: for defining long-term development prospects within contexts of grown and contraction; for safeguarding building structures through interim, converted, or continued use and bringing stakeholders together; for delivering multiplier effects; and for increasing marketability.

The findings on dealing with historically valuable key buildings in municipalities with specific urban development problems have been presented at events and will be collected in a publication aimed at municipal practitioners and specialists in relevant industries.

The contractor was complan Kommunalberatung GmbH, based in Potsdam, Germany.

Contact us

  • Christoph Vennemann
    Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development
    Division RS 7 "Baukultur and Urban Architectural Conservation"
    Phone: +49 228 99401-1246
    Email: christoph.vennemann@bbr.bund.de

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