Living and working promotes art and culture. This is the guiding principle of the co-operative Gewerbekultur Pforzheim e.G. for the development of the Alter Schlachthof Pforzheim.
As an office, we were commissioned with the complete process management of the state-funded revitalisation process to develop a new lively, ecological and cooperative quarter in and around the Alter Schlachthof together with the Gewerbekultur Pforzheim e.G. cooperative. This includes the planning for the interim use of the large halls of the former abattoir for Gewerbekultur Pforzheim e.G., the preparation of a feasibility study to determine and present the potential of „living on the roof“ and the urban development (development plan procedure) of the entire site as a mixed area for “living, working, art and culture“. The aim is to revitalise the site with a mix of commercial uses, studios, social facilities and inclusive housing models. This will create added value for the immediate neighbourhood and the city of Pforzheim.
In the spirit of dialogue-oriented process support, we work cooperatively with users, neighbours and the urban community to test creative and cultural uses and enable renovation concepts for artists' studios and housing. The existing building from the 1950s is to be used sustainably by using ecological and regional materials and retaining and upgrading as much of the existing structure as possible.
The special feature of this project is the dynamic and collaborative, participatory project development, in which many processes are parallelised and variants are tested and discussed together. In this project, we are acting as general planners with MSing Cordoba Löffler GmbH and are providing the entire process support and project coordination across all relevant trades and planning phases from a single source. This form of process management is scalable in key aspects and transferable to other similar projects by local authorities and companies that consider the revitalisation of old commercial properties to be appropriate and sustainable.
