“Alte Schmelz” is a factory settlement west of the St. Ingbert city center and a historic example of the close connection between living and working in an ironworks.
During the project week, 32 students as well as eight professors from htw saar and the participating ERASMUS partner universities from Brno, Nancy, Florence, Seville, and Waterford developed new concepts for the use of the site in mixed-national teams. "This is not about presenting a competing plan to the MESS master plan. We want to show how the area can be better connected to the surroundings and the city center of St. Ingbert in social, ecological, and cultural terms," describes Prof. Jens Metz the objectives of the workshop.
On the grounds around the industrial cathedral "Alte Schmelz" between Saarbrücker Straße, Alleestraße, and Dudweiler Straße, there are also the event house, the Möllerhalle, the student research center, recently renovated residential buildings, and the company workshops. Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Michael Backes, CEO and founding director of the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, presented the plans for the CISPA Innovation Campus on the grounds of Alte Schmelz in a detailed lecture to the workshop participants on October 4, 2022. The site is intended to provide space for spin-offs and the establishment of companies in the fields of information and communication technology, information security, and artificial intelligence. The current master plan foresees 800 jobs for computer scientists by 2025, with further expansion stages planned.
In the workshop, the students developed various concepts. In doing so, they examined the area from six thematic perspectives: connections to the surroundings and the city center, or distinctions from them, the mix of research, living and working, integration of housing on the site, development of a green-blue infrastructure (flora and water), material identity of the buildings, and typology of the structures. These questions opened up many possibilities for the students to shape the area and incorporate their views and ways of thinking into the designs. During the final presentation, the representatives of CISPA and the city of St. Ingbert praised the designs and took with them valuable ideas and impulses for the implementation of the CISPA Innovation Campus.
Stefan Braun, Beckerturm Immobilien GmbH: "The young architectural talents have placed special focus on the preservation and integration of the existing buildings and have also strongly emphasized sustainability. It was also noticeable that the connection of the location to the city center is an important issue in the planning."
Nicole Ziesche, who is responsible on behalf of CISPA for the development of the CISPA Innovation Campus, takes positive impressions from the project week: "I am impressed by the many new ideas and usage concepts that have emerged in a very short time. The development company takes away a lot of inspiration to develop the CISPA Innovation Campus into a place that offers space for creativity, collaboration, but also work-life balance. I am confident that we will create an ideal environment here for the development of innovative ideas so that the cybersecurity community finds a unique home at the CISPA Innovation Campus."
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Background
Re-FACT is the abbreviation for 'Re-use of Factories' and was founded in 2006 by a group of professors from the architecture schools of htw saar, TU Brno, and the Università di Firenze with the aim of raising students' awareness of the topics of repurposing and valorization of existing building stock through concrete examples in the respective countries. At the same time, the involved students can improve their intercultural competence as well as their foreign language skills, as they communicate with each other in the working languages English, French, Spanish, and German and present their results in the form of a final presentation and a publication.
