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Our task is to design a building for a new type of academy, which should make three essential areas of a sustainable lifestyle tangible and learnable: Nutrition - preparing and cooking food and eating together, Sport - movement, body awareness and balance, Soul - a place for rest and concentration, and a lot of connection to nature.

Schellack-Höfe

The courtyard complex ‚Schellack-Höfe' is characterized by its fantastic location on the Spree and the architectural quality of the existing buildings.
The aim of our design is to develop the location sustainably, as well as to make 'Die Schellack-Höfe' more present in the city and to enhance the perception of the quarter.

Neu Hohenschönhausen

The main goal of the competiton entryof BURA and morePlatz for the Neu Hohenschönhausen city center is a balanced mix of living and working. Recognizability and context are created by individual green areas, usages and different dimensions of distinct spaces. The detailed development varies building types and heights and is fitted into a diverse network of paths, squares and parks.

MVRDV and morePlatz have completed ZigZag, an office building that pioneers the transformation of Mainz’s Zollhafen from an industrial area to a lively city quarter. With its zig-zagging “folded skin” of aluminium panels, the six-storey building creates a landmark at Zollhafen’s Hafenspitze, enjoying views over the entire harbour basin.

Südliches Gartenfeld

With the closing of Berlin's airport Tegel in 2020 the industrial area ‚Gartenfeld', south of the former runway, is apt for redevelopment. In 2019 morePlatz was commissioned an urban study for the southern part of the island in the canal between Berlin and Spandau with the distinctive shape of a rounded triangle. The study also comprised a concept for a planned depot for the new fleet of e-buses of the BVG.

The Hamburg Innovation Port - HIP - forms the future context for the building HIP_1, which comprises the first phase of the development.
The location of the HIP in the Harburg inland harbor, between the Blohmstraße and the Ziegelwiesenkanal, offers a characteristic atmosphere, as well as a clear address of the project from the city as well as from the water side. The buildings of the HIP are organized in four strips oriented to the docks.

Citycenter Freiham

What kind of a center Freiham should get? What is special about the developing community around the ‘Mahatma Gandhi Platz’? How open and diverse is this place? How adaptable and alive during the day from early morning till late evening? The main point of the design is the vitality and use of the square. The buildings form a serving and in a comprehensive sense sustainable scenery.

Hohen Neuendorf

On top of the existing garage in the north of Berlin, a single-storey residential house in timber frame construction is added. The original building from 1978 was expanded by a storage in the early 1980s.
The former garage is newly plastered and the extension completely covered with horizontal wooden cladding. The existing structure and its addition appear as one coherent volume with a clearly legible subdivision.

The two southern blocks of the masterplan for Quartier Heidestrasse form an urbanistic exception - the new buildings are clustered in between existing volumes - party used for housing, partly commercial - and linked into one big city block. In contrast to the overall area of the Europa City, the buildings are part of a paramount urban structure. The design reflects this situation by combining the different functions of hotel, free sector and social housing into distinguished but related blocks.

The concept for Dietenbach is built on an adaptive design that picks up existing structures and forms a stable basis for future conditions yet unknown. The historical principle of the European city - structural flexibility - is applied to the new district by tracing existing elements and organizing them as a base for the new development - similar to a ‚small acre city'.

Hamburg Innovation Port
competition 1st Prize; collaboration with MVRDV

HIP, the Hamburg Innovation Center, is located at a bassin in the port of Harburg, as one important piece of the long-term project 'channel harburg' for conversion and development of the area. The basic organisation and the high density is based on an interpretation and densification of the combinations and compositions of large building-volumes that are characteristic for harbour areas.

For a long time the European project was considered an obvious development that generated benefits for all parties concerned. The succession of serious crises that move the continent for a decade, endangers this project for the first time seriously. The Brexit could weaken the entire alliance sustainably.
The current situation is so loaded with problems that a positive sign appears necessary. Europe lacks visibility, public presence and positive feedback.

Freiham München
competition 3rd Prize; collaboration with Oever Zaaijer

Freiham is currently Munich’s largest urban development project, situated at the western perimeter of the city. In the coming years approximately 4.000 flats and apartments will be built. Municipal housing developer Gewofag organized and run the competition for a project of ca. 230 units of social subsidized housing plus social and cultural program. The design of morePlatz, in collaboration with Oever Zaaijer, Amsterdam and Realgrün, Munich was awarded the 3rd Prize

Neuperlach München
invited urban design planning competition, 1st phase

The location is an especially interesting place in itself, which should be considered in a broader perspective. In North-South direction it is situated inbetween two very different, almost contrary areas of the city; in East-West direction it is fitted inbetween two very different types of open space or landscape. At present it is a gap in the otherwise built-up eastern edge of the city, and it is functioning as a buffer between the suburban family houses of Trudering and the large scale urban blocks of Neuperlach from the 70ies.

Hafenspitze Mainz
competition 1st Prize; collaboration with MVRDV

Mainz's harbour area is being converted into a new urban neighborhood of residential and commercial functions. The plot 'Hafenspitze' is located at the far end of the harbour bassin overlooking the new development around the water. In order to create a strong and modestly iconic appearance for this pioneer development of the neighborhood the project reshapes the masterplan. The design proposes two distinct compact volumes forming an ensemble with a public plaza in its center.

GreenNest is a project initiated by InnovatieNetwerk together with SIGN and STIRR (private foundations for innovation in greenhouse industry and hospitality/tourism) with the support and collaboration of the municipal authorities of Amsterdam. GreenNest is designed to become one iconic project for both subjects. It combines a unique hotel and an experience center of stacked green worlds into one innovative building on a site in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost. The experience center comprises 10.000m2 over five floors very high floors with ca. 200 hotel lodges suspended from the ceilings.

The design of the new 'Forum Building' is based on an interpretation of the layers and urban references of the very characteristic site in the center of Vienna. The building is composed of three slightly shifted volumes which refer, on different levels, to the structure of blocks and the historic rules and regulations of 'Rathauscarrée' around the City Hall. The shift of the volumes creates portions of different programme and allows for expanding public space on ground floor level and the rooftop.

‘Stadskas’ is a project designed for the Rhine-Harbour Area in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It is a floating greenhouse that aims to connect the city’s population with the water as an urban space. In the framework of the development and ‘colonisation’ of the vast areas of former city-harbours of Rotterdam it has a substantial connection with water and with the future of water-life in this city. The water surface in the Netherlands will increasingly be included in the visions of the development of sustainable cities.

The floating pool 'Zwemboot' brings back a historical function to the Rijnharbor of Rotterdam: from 1922 till 1962 the floating pool in the river Maas was highly popular especially for the youth at that time. Fifty years later, the private initiative of the architectural office morePlatz together with the swimming school 'Kikkersprong' revives this historical background.
The public pool not only addresses kids and swimming lessons but forms an attraction for the whole neighborhood with a wide program of water sports, swim training, sauna, wellness and massages.

The urban plan for the so-called 'communication zone' Garching foresees a permeable and open district that loosely links housing, public functions, schools, sports as well as social and commercial facilities. The buildings are embedded in a public landscape of fruit trees and walnuts.
The concept restricts the surfaces of fenced-off private property and aims at a maximum of communicative areas in order to mediate between the city and the University Campus.

The headquarters of the "Vendu Notarishuis" - located at Kipstraat 54 - was one of Rotterdam's first buildings constructed after the war. It originally hosted the institute for the blind and features some remarkable architectural details such as large toplight rosettes and a spacious plinth. The building designed by Vermeer & van Herwaarden - nowadays listed as a monument - was converted into an auction hall in 1991 by Dutch architects Van den Broek & Bakema.

Conceiving a solution for the centre of Martinsried deals with the identity of the town - especially because of its location in-between the city of Munich and the 'Würm' valley. Besides its proximity to the prosperous suburbs along the river, Martinsried is influenced by the internationally renowned research campus for biotechnology and the Max Planck institute. The future connection to the subway system puts Martinsried on the Munich 'mind map' and therefore into a new context.

Twelve years ago 'morePlatz' had realized the installation 'Siedlung' at the railway tracks of Munich's Central Station. Eight orange tents - each located at the head of abandoned cargo platforms - marked a dynamic space in the very city center just before the place got converted into a new bus terminal. The positive presence of the brightly illuminated tents related to the accelerated kinetics of the nineties when the digital revolution and the information and communication technologies had just started their global impact. The increasing individual mobility had launched a new form of urban nomadism, an interconnectivity of the 'kinetic elite' worldwide.

In the vicinity of the competition site, the hIstorical buildings of the old 'pre-war' city of Berlin layout shall be reconstructed. What is the suitable handling with the task of building a new office complex in this strict framework? Can we design an image that beats the longing for the past? Which architecture pays respect to the site and at the same time stays recognizable as a contemporary building without historical quote, irony or criticism?

Kreativquartier

The project asks for a long-term conversion strategy of a 20ha area north of Munichs center. Currently a mix of temporary atelier spaces, start-ups, municipal infrastructure services, empty lots and abandoned industrial monuments compose the scenery.
How can the new development preserve some of this undetermined mixed and open atmosphere while at the same time create 900 new houses, office space and faculties for the University of Applied Science in Munich?

Haus der Zukunft

The situation of this historically meaningful area along the riverside of the Spree - right where the 'wall' used to separate the city - forms a challenging background for the 'House of the Future'. This central part of Berlin is still in development and the 'mental map' of the citizens and visitors is still undefined. Its immediate neighborhood is transformed according to a historicist master plan. Being an 'Exhibition hall of the Future' it not only has to constitute a 'window to the world of tomorrow' but also has to describe an access to the 'world of today'.
How can the project cope with the ambitious futuristic program and at the same time intermediate with the traditional block structure?

An entire cityblock in the western areas of Stuttgart is to be remodeled and developped for residential programme of ca. 200 houses. The erratic collection of large scale medical buildings of the Olga hospital that was composed of several decades should be 're-contextualized' in the new proposal.
The city block of the 19th century provides useful formal reference regarding scale and density. How can this type be applied and improved to match contemporary criteria? Which qualities could be added to the traditional block and how should it be upgraded to meet the requirements of 'new urban living'?

The location of 'Kronenwiese' marks the transition from the inner city to the more quiet residential neighborhoods along the slope of 'Zürichberg'. A beautiful site overlooking the city towards the valley of river Limmat, yet restricted by busy roads on two sides of the site which cut the connections to the adjacent areas and to the river.
The programme of ca. 95 houses plus kindergardens and commercial spaces demands for a rather high density of building. How can the new structure be integrated with the surroundings? Could it even achieve an urban improvement for the area by spatial organisation and possible new connections?

Café Eisenmann

The Bavarian National Forest is Germany’s first National Park. It was found in 1970 and represents a regional attraction and important economic factor for the whole area with more than 700.000 visitors per year.
Since the fall of the ‘Iron Curtain’ the region is witnessing a continuous upswing – being shifted from a former fringe to a central position in Europe. Due to the National Park’s 40th anniversary the visitors’ center in Neuschönau is refurbished and extended.

The Future of Tradition

In 1910, a one-off and never to be repeated event took place at Munich’s exhibition grounds, known today as Theresienhöhe. With nearly 3,600 exhibits arranged in 80 rooms, the show presented and acknowledged the entire spectrum of the Islamic world’s visual culture. This exhibition set new standards for the reception and research of Islamic art in the West.

‚Baugespann‘ visualizes the future development in the Wineharbour Rotterdam.
The inflated balloon-structure marks the planned tower ‚100 high‘ at the corner Wijnstraat-Posthornstraat in scale 1:1.
An array of helium filled balloons are tacked up along four inflated columns as pearls on a necklace. One balloon per floor outlines the envelop of the future volume - the structure visualizes the building right at its original location.

The new kiosk building for the bath 'Mythenquai' preserves the spacious lawn with solitary trees along the shore. The impressive landscape of the lake of Zurich is even enhanced - 'Fountain' is placed exactly at the same spot as the former kiosk.
The vicinity to the shore but still central position is advantageous and takes into account the usage of customers throughout decennia. The new pavilion is fit into the center of the altered path system, that links the relevant elements of the site and guarantees optimal accessibility.

In the 60’s and 70’s harbour areas and their waterfronts were not much appreciated in many european cities. They were neglected and considered problematic.
Quite often they were cut off from the city’s most frequented neighborhoods by vast infrastructural bodies and douane barriers.
Today – due to re-location and modernization of harbor activities - these areas offer great opportunities for development of new neighborhoods.

Nieuw Amsterdam

The concept for the project is based on the historic link between Manhattan and Amsterdam. Manhattan’s very beginning, its urban development and its programmatic richness serve as a reference on three levels.
The paradoxical task of creating an ‘Open Fort’ leads to an elevated structure that is bold and emblematic but at the same time allowing for maximum accessibility of the IJ-oevers and visual connections with the city centre of Amsterdam across the river.

Amsterdam aan Zee

According to the Dutch policy plan Randstad 2040, there will be an enormous need for new housing in the west of the country. At the same time, the endless suburbanization and loss of natural resorts and agricultural areas has to be opposed.
New developpments should be dense and vital and have to suffice to sustainable demands for energy consumption, social cohesion and mobility.

In the wake of the urban development 'CAN' Centrum Amsterdam North - with 3.300 houses, social and cultural programm, a new shopping center, sports club and metro connection - an upgrade of the whole Buikslotermeerplein area is expected.
The adjacent apartment buildings at the Ijdoornlaan - four identical flats of 160 units - are in poor condition and a renovation seems not profitable.

The essence of the refurbishment of the bookshop 'Lehmkuhl' in Munich is to achieve a clear spatial overview - a 'room made of books' - that allows a distinguished zoning. The continuous profile along the wall elevations guarantees a maximum display.
The combination of two prototypes of shelves creates an optimized corner detail that continuously folds around each corner, column and wall recess and maximizes the total shelf length to a 1000 m.

Following the succesfull concept of the existing farm in Belbeis, Sekem is planning a large scale extensions of around 930 ha in the Oasis Wahat. Next to the irrigation and conversion of the desert soil into fertile farmland, the so-called ‘ECO CITY’ project comprises the construction of buildings for housing, production, education and culture.

The Sekem Farm was founded in 1977 by Dr Ibrahim Abouleish on an untouched part of the desert in an area 60 kilometers northwest of Cairo. Over the years, Sekem became a multifaceted agro-industrial group of business companies specialized in organic products.
European guests visiting the farm are so far hosted in the famous ‘Roundhouse’, the initial adobe building constructed 30 years ago. As the international reputation of Sekem attracts more and more visitors, a new guesthouse with 20 rooms, a lobby, restaurant and kitchen is required.

The design of the new Estonian Art Academy is conceived as a voided tower. The faculties are arranged along a single loaded hallway opening up to a large communal space. Its conical shape receives top-light to the very centre of the academy.
The building is interpreted as a metaphor - a very large telescope, a giant camera obscura, a pinhole to the sky.

Rive Gauche creates new relations and activities between the low-profile residential neighborhood of Spangen the Van Nelle Design Factory and the adjacent districts. Spangen is circumscribed by infrastructural boundaries and a wide canal - the Delfshavense Schie which is the focus of this project. The proposed interventions activate the banks of the canal, they establish new links and a residential building across the canal. They introduce public neighborhood-oriented functions in the up to now fenced-off Van Nelle terrain.

Münjing presents Munich's new infrastructural link to the Mediterranean. The direct connection to the Adria across the Alps sets free the sentiments of 'Fernweh' and the dynamics of harbourcities right in the center of the Bavarian capital. The initial project is realized at the Stachus... Münjing is a collaboration of morePlatz, PAM and Bunnyhill.

What could a place like Mr. Visserplein offer to a city? Mr. Visserplein is a somewhat confusing traffic junction of five roads and a tram-line. Nevertheless its interiour created space for an underground program of unexpected playfulness and it gave the actual shape to the encircled island of the square: the shape of a stadium.

Compound = heterogeneous elements combined to form a new entity. The specific condition of the site in Enschede is the confrontation of the existing low rise residential area with the future vision of massive, urban highrise structures along the railway tracks.

Le Bloq Sportif

The site of Malley represents a truly interior situation of Lausanne. It is a flat piece of land, that is sunk into the ground between roads and rails. It is lacking topography and the magnificent view over the lake Geneva into the Alps. Its vast, yet enclosed character attracts large scale buildings and space consuming, semi-industrial programme.

Angular remnants of ground are left over where the HSL South line curves away from the Schiphol line. Surrounded by dynamic infrastructure, the site forms a secluded enclave - an island cut out of the scenery - that is yet highly exposed to the vision of thousands of travelers passing by.

The reflection on Citybranding reveals an actual conflict of nowadays cities’ realities. Both cities, Amersfoort and Breda, have been developing rapidly over the past 20 years. The growth in scale and the altered relations with the surroundings form a new context in which the role of the historic centre as the one provider of identity is not sufficient anymore.

The Mobile City

The new spaces of the city are no longer composed of buildings and facades. Transformed data is streaming homogeneously through space and forming global connections. The city is the whole earth and all the cities are one city. A coherent network of mondial exchange is maintained by the inhabitants of its multilocal center.

West of Munich’s Central Station there’s a particular space. Secluded urban void located in the citie’s very center. An empty field of rails and electricity lines providing routes and destinations. It is bordered by discarded cargo facilities and rails, interlocking like fjords.

Glowing industries

Glowing industries‘ proposes to inhabit the interior spaces of large industrial structures. The rough beauty hidden in these megasculptures ignites the wish of appropriating, colonizing and possessing. An aesthetic strength shimmers through the volumes‘ surfaces, shaped and designed by nothing else but functional means.

The ‚Institut für Bagonalismus‘ was founded by Prof. Nicolai Sarafov in 1986 in Munich. *Bagonalismus is a neologism he invented to label his project. The Institute publishes an occasional magazine of graphic art, free lance contributions and an ongoing anthology of definitions of bago. Collecting these items together with the stuff related to it, the institute builds up the need of a library of its own.

The site of the Sarajevo Concert Hall is surrounded by different urban structures: the tall solitaire buildings of parliament, government and UNIS towers, that form a gateway to the older parts of the town, dominate the area adjoining west of Vrbanja Road.

Spatial spas are bifurcations of the mobile reserved place and the layers in front and behind of it. They are subjective maps. They describe ubiquitous conditions and categories of the city, from which one is composing one’s own city - universal map of internal cities. These undetected more-world trips facilitate further education and help tracing out the right way to the right place in the nomadic world.

The videofilm ’more Platz‘ accompanies our agency for mobile, reserved places at its conceptual and actual work - in the office, in the city and its surroundings. The agency‘s concern is to reflect on space in general and on the everyday usage of the enormous potentials of available spaces.The infinite possibilities of the ‚wide and undefined‘ and the interrelations of location, event and time determine the ’more‘ view.

From Inside To Outside

The project focuses on the dynamic process of spatial and social changes in the region of Weimar - Erfurt after the German Reunion in 1989. Formerly derelict GDR borderland, now central in Mid Europe and Germany,the region is facing uncontrolled development of enormous extent. The country‘s inner order was substituted by another operating system. Together with the impact of economic cravings this released a wave of newness which set the whole region in motion - transforming its surface appearance.

By superimposing aspects from James Joyces ‘Ulysses’ on the site of Munich‘s powerplant ‚HKW Süd‘, dense urban life, multilayered complexity and heterogenity is generated. James Joyce: «I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin, I can get to the hearts of all the cities in the world. In the particular is contained the universal.»

A secluded slope in the Italian Sea-Alps forms the background scenery for a place where filmstudents, directors, scriptwriters, cameramen and actors get together to learn, teach and work. The analysis of Federico Fellinis movie «8 1/2» shows the scenes and their duration, the performing characters in relation to the protagonist and the differentiation between dream and reality. Projected onto the site, the 3D graphic forms the spatial framework for the academy buildings.

morePlatz / Westhafenstrasse 1 / D - 13353 Berlin / +49 - (0)30 - 2509 6279 / office@moreplatz.com / www.moreplatz.com

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