The flood disaster in July 2021 left far-reaching damage in the villages along the river Ahr in the north of Rhineland-Palatinate and changed the landscape of the Ahr Valley in a previously unimagined way within one day. Since then, those responsible on site have been faced – in addition to short-term disaster management – with the challenging task of developing a long-term sustainable concept for restoring the region and making it habitable again as well as attractive for tourists.

In the summer term of 2022, the design project surveyed four distinctive villages along the course of the Ahr in terms of landscape as well as architectural history, so that culturally and historically sustainable perspectives for the future could then be designed on an urban scale. On this basis, the task for the winter term of 2022/23 was to create impulse-giving building designs around the building ensemble of the winegrowers' cooperative in Mayschoß, which was damaged by the flood and represents the economic and social anchor of the village. The aim of the design was the challenging combination of the analyzed identity-forming characteristics of the village with a flood-preventive construction method to a contemporary architecture.

With their design proposal, Christian Klosterkötter and Judith Sigel aim to forge a strong connection with the surrounding landscape and wish to preserve the core of the cooperative by retaining the historic cellar vaults. After the vineyard adjacent to the winegrowers' cooperative was removed at great expense over the course of the last century, the new structure fills the prominent gap and forms a continuation of the vineyard with its stepped cubature and vine-planted roofs. The lower floors of the building house the sales department, the bottling plant and, in addition to a warehouse, the administrative offices. On the upper two floors there is a hotel. As a contrast to this building, which is discreetly embedded in nature, an eye-catching pavilion serves as a new entrance to the cellar vaults. In addition, an elongated, plain building is planned parallel to the existing halls – in this way, a square situation is created between the three new structures, inviting both the winegrowers' cooperative and the village.