M2.1 | St. Hubertus by Gottfried Böhm

St. Hubertus by Gottfried Böhm –
Visions for the "Backenzahn"

At the foot of Aachen's Kronenberg, the Catholic Church of St. Hubertus, completed in 1964, is an architectural gem designed by Pritzker Prize winner Gottfried Böhm. Once a lively quarter church, the building, popularly known as the "molar", is now rarely used, so that as a result of the "Kirchliches Immobilienmanagement" (KIM) process in the Aachen diocese, an - initially fictitious - future alternative use is now to be developed for the church building.

The design project (M2.1a) in the first semester aims to explore the spatial and functional potential of the formerly slate-clad "rock of concrete" anew and (following the architect's original idea of a veritable community centre) to devise uses in and around the church building that (once again) make this place, which was actually intended as an entrance to the neighbourhood, a point of attraction and connection. Like the pilgrimage church in Neviges or the churches of the St. Hildegard Centre for the Elderly in Düsseldorf-Garath and the Bethanien Children's Village in Bergisch Gladbach-Refrath, Böhm never conceived of the St. Hubertus Church in Aachen as a free-standing solitaire, but rather as the central architecture of a larger complex, which was not realised in Aachen.

In the second semester (M2.1b) the design part of the project is supplemented by an architectural-historical and architectural-research analysis of the Church of St. Hubertus in Aachen-Hanbruch in comparison with other church buildings from the same phase of Böhm's work, with the aim of determining its significance in general and its role as a potential key building in his entire œuvre.

The work will be carried out in teams of two consisting of Master's students with an interest in design and architectural history.