Kaufbeuren Transect

Client Europan12

Location Kaufbeuren, DE

Area 230ha 

Function Urban Plan

Year 2013

Phase Competition

Partner Only If

Team Joris Fach, Karolina Czeczek, Adam Frampton

Kaufbeuren Transect is a proposal to adapt the former airport into a continuum of conditions—from north to south—urban to suburban to rural to natural. This range of different built fabrics (and their corresponding typologies) is intended to ensure that a spectrum of different future needs, both known and unknown, can be met. At the same time, the project takes a number of existing clues from the site and former airport to generate character for the new development.
An underlying grid structures the project. This provides the ability to implement this plan incrementally over the next 50 years. Squares approximately 300m, 200m, and 100m can be subdivided over time, as needed, to provide different degrees of density. It is envisioned that eventually the tightest blocks will occupy the north, and the most open blocks will occupy the south.
The former runway and its apron areas are preserved as a green finger linking the forest in south to the old city center. This linear park transects the gradient of various fabrics, binding them and providing recreational and outdoor amenities throughout the entire development.
Other elements of the site are also preserved; existing pathways create informal alleys through the northern perimeter blocks, topographic contours in the south indicate the routes for secondary roads. In addition, several existing buildings on west around the aviation school are absorbed into the campus and aviation R&D band.