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Education Institute Hospitalhof

Lederer Ragnarsdottir Oei

Education Institute Hospitalhof
By Caterina Testa -

A building is always part of a whole - part of an urban or natural landscape. Its very presence changes the relationships between other parts of the surrounding fabric. It follows therefore that every construction matters since it concerns the common or collective interest.
Churches and places of worship, town halls, service buildings and other embodiments of the body politic are not just symbolic and functional expressions of a given urban conglomerate. They are also the physical and spatial representation of the complex, close-knit relationship that exists between architecture, public space and urban life.
As if harking back to a Nolli map, the Hospitalhof project by German practice Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei sets itself the target of reviving the former relationship between the public buildings that once stood on the site and the surrounding public realm. They turned their brief into an opportunity to bring to light the ancient urban pattern that had been blocked out by the blanket orthogonal grid of post-WWII reconstruction.
The new complex stands on the site of a former Dominican monastery now destroyed. The only remaining vestige is part of a wall of the Gothic cathedral that backed onto the monastery. The north-east side of the plot is bounded by part of the ancient cathedral nave and what remains of the Gothic church wall. From here, the new building develops in a south-west direction, tracing the ground plan of the old monastery in defiance of the modern orthogonal grid. The resultant triangular-shaped public area wedged between the road and the new volume has been turned into the approach from the city to the Hospitalhof education centre.
The breadth of the new building has allowed the creation of an intimate open space in the centre of the plot. Divided into two segments, again in deference to the former urban layout, it comprises: a long stretch once occupied by the cathedral’s central nave, a line of tall trees now...

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