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Sunset at the North Campus © Roland Baege​/​TU Dortmund
13th International Spring Academy

Architecture Students Develop Ideas for Station Forecourt

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The picture shows a group photo of many different people, which was taken outside on a staircase in front of a building. © Hesham Elsherif​/​TU Dortmund
The participants of the 13th International Spring Academy present their designs at Baukunstarchiv NRW, North Rhine-Westphalia’s archive for architecture and civil engineering.
Every day, around 130,000 people pass through Dortmund Central Station – and the square in front of it gives them both their first impression of the city and the one they take home with them. How can the station forecourt be designed and built in such a way that it becomes both an appealing place in its own right for travelers and Dortmund citizens to linger as well as an inviting gateway to the city? Around 60 students from five European universities tackled this question at the 13th International Spring Academy organized by TU Dortmund University. The prospective architects presented their designs at the Baukunstarchiv NRW, North Rhine-Westphalia’s archive for architecture and civil engineering, on 19 March.

Students from TU Dortmund University, University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, University of Naples Federico II, Eindhoven University of Technology and Ghent University had ten days to develop ideas for a new forecourt. The cross-university groups got to grips with the area between Dortmund Central Station and St. Petri Church, from Harenberg City-Center in the west to RWE Tower in the east. Their source of inspiration was, for example, the city’s history: “The Wallring, the street located where the historic town wall used to be, runs directly in front of the station,” says Adjunct Professor Michael Schwarz from the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, who is in charge of the Spring Academy together with Adjunct Professor Olaf Schmidt. “Historically, the gates to the city also possessed an architectural significance that no longer exists today, which is why the buildings on the station forecourt perform this function in the students’ designs.”

The students analyzed urban development and the present situation on site. To kick off the academy, Stefan Szuggat, Head of the Environment, Planning and Housing Department of the City of Dortmund, presented the city’s perspective on the area under study. Furthermore, the students themselves also passed through Dortmund Central Station on their daily journey from their accommodation in the city center to the university’s campus. As Olaf Schmidt explains: “In this way, the students were able to identify the area’s needs and potential from different perspectives. On the basis of this analysis, they developed concepts that now clearly define the station forecourt, which was previously inexperiencable as urban space, and thus substantially improve its quality for both travelers and Dortmund residents spending time there.”

Collaboration with Long-term Partners

The outcome was twelve proposals that integrate the station into the urban context as a representative of the “Transport” theme and establish a connection via the forecourt to the other squares in the city center. For example, the students highlighted the visual axis to St. Petri Church or included the German Football Museum and the City and State Library in the discussion. Moreover, they used a true-to-scale wooden model of the planning zone to check their plans over and over again during the various work phases. Olaf Schmidt says: “We are delighted that we were able – thanks to the support provided by the Model Making Workshop – to work with haptic models again for the first time since 2020. It enables the students to test their concepts in model form at regular intervals, both in terms of their internal effect and in relation to the surrounding urban space, and to make them experiencable from all perspectives.”

An overview of the results and models presented as part of the final assessment at the Baukunstarchiv NRW will now be made available to the City of Dortmund. “The collaboration with the international partner universities will also extend beyond the end of the workshop,” reports Michael Schwarz. “A group of students from Naples will continue to work on the area around Dortmund Central Station after they have returned home: They want to build on the project work from the Spring Academy for their Master’s theses and in the process also include the second forecourt on the north side of the station.”

About the International Spring Academy:

As a local equivalent to the “International Summer Academy of Fine Arts and Media”, which has taken place in Venice for almost 40 years, the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at TU Dortmund University has staged the International Spring Academy every year since 2013. The thematic focus lies on Dortmund’s city center: Teams in recent years dealt, for example, with the B1 highway, the “Wall” (site of the Middle Age ramparts), Hellweg (an old trading route), squares in the inner city, Nordstadt (the northern part of Dortmund’s city center), urban wasteland, the densification of the “Unionviertel” district, the land conversion of the former Hoesch steelworks, large housing estates, entrances to the city, the port, and department stores in the city center. The International Spring Academy enables both students and teaching staff to exchange ideas with colleagues from different countries, work together and establish long-term international contacts. There are plans to hold an International Spring Academy at TU Dortmund University again in 2026.

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