IBA Thüringen

The valley of the Schwarzatal was for generations a popular summer holiday destination. In the 19th century, especially during the period of industrialisation, city dwellers headed to the cooler climes of the countryside to escape the heat and bustle of the cities and relax in bucolic surroundings. Evidence of this tradition can still be seen in the typical summer resort architecture of the region.

The ‘Haus Bräutigam’ association is developing a former ‘Sommerfrische’ summer holiday residence in Schwarzburg into a place for short-term living and working after the ‘Zukunftswerkstatt Schwarzatal’ stepped in and saved the building in the centre of the village from demolition. The communally organised project for the resource-efficient reconstruction and conversion of the disused building is intended as a model for similar initiatives in the village, region and beyond.

‘Bräutigam Sommerfrische House’ also represents a new symbiotic urban-rural connection. In addition to acquiring IBA project status, the association has also been granted funding from the ‘Rural Development in Thuringia’ initiative as part of the ‘European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development’. In autumn 2019, work began on gutting earlier alterations and removing the applied facade to expose the house’s original half-timbered appearance.

“The opportunity to spend the night in a church attracts people from near and far, giving the church new appeal as the social centre of the community. The Her(R)bergskirche is a successful example of sustainable tourism.”
Prof. Barbara Holzer, IBA Thüringen Advisory Board  

What’s it like to sleep in a church? Inspired by the EKM Protestant Church in Central Germany’s open call for ideas in 2017, regional stakeholders and external ideators have joined minds and hands to find new uses for churches in the Thüringer Wald holiday region. St Michael’s Church in Neustadt am Rennsteig is the first of a series of wayside shelters and overnight stopovers in churches – the so-called HER(R)BERGSKIRCHEN – along the Rennsteig Hiking Trail.

A provisional solution first installed in 2017 was converted in 2018 into a permanent sleeping niche at the rear of the neo-Romanesque choir near the church tower. The model project in Neustadt enables passing hikers to stay the night in the church. 93 people took up the opportunity in 2018, and more than 155 in 2019. The success of the project has prompted the parish to come up with other possible uses: a space for yoga courses, a library and a communal cooking and dining area are now scheduled to be installed in the coming years. It also earned the church the EKM’s “Golden Steeple Award” in 2019. Additional LEADER funding has made it possible to install a guest bathroom and kitchen next to the sleeping niche in 2020 and 2021.

The success of the IBA pilot project in the Church of St Michael in Neustadt am Rennsteig has encouraged other churches to open their doors to passing hikers. In 2020, the HER(R)BERGSKIRCHEN received a new addition with the Lutherkirche in Tambach-Dietharz. This was followed in 2021 by the St Matthew's Church in Spechtsbrunn, which will be offered as a HER(R)BERGSKIRCHE for the first time in the summer of 2022. In addition, the planning process for the Church of St Catherine in Hirschberg an der Saale will begin in 2022. As in Neustadt am Rennsteig, micro-architectural insertions will supplement the historical naves of the churches to create spaces for simple sleeping accommodation as well as for meetings and communal use. These site-specific interventions make the churches more usable and bring them back into the public consciousness of the villagers and visitors as public places in the community.

A diverse network of local participants has arisen around each project, and an overarching brand – the HER(R)BERGSKIRCHEN – has been developed to connect the locations and coordinate ideas, marketing and tourism potential. The capital (R) is a reference to the Rennsteig Hiking Trail that runs the length of the Thuringian Forest region.

The idea is a product of the “'STADTLAND:Church 2017” ideas competition organised by the Protestant Church in Central Germany (EKM) together with the IBA Thüringen. The project was initiated and further developed by the volunteers from the parish of Neustadt am Rennsteig with the support of young architects from Berlin and Leipzig.

“The Eiermannbau is an iconic work of modernist industrial architecture that the IBA is successively developing as an own initiative. The intention is to demonstrate first-hand how vacant buildings can be revitalised and made habitable in imaginative, sustainable and reactivating ways. An innovative contractual agreement between the LEG Thüringen as the owners and the IBA Thüringen as the tenant allows the IBA to develop concepts for future new users at low risk until 2023. This approach, along with the fact that the building remains in public ownership, are important prerequisites for successfully developing structurally underdeveloped regions.”
Andrea Hofmann, IBA Thüringen Advisory Board

The small town of Apolda lies between Jena and Weimar and was an important industrial location for many decades. Textiles have been produced here since the beginning of the 18th century, initially stockings and later knitwear and hosiery. Very few of the 6,000 jobs that once existed in the textile industry survived after the reunification of Germany. As a result, many of the town’s larger production sites were abandoned, among them a factory building known as the Eiermannbau. Since 2018, the IBA Thüringen has been developing this industrial monument into an open factory.

The Eiermannbau is the only building designed by architect Egon Eiermann in Thuringia. Originally built as a weaving mill to a design by the Apolda architect Hermann Schneider, it was used as a factory for fire extinguishers from the 1930s until 1994. Eiermann extended the original building in 1938 and 1939, respectfully extending the existing building structure while also incorporating the functional and aesthetic requirements of his time. Egon Eiermann is regarded as one of the most important German architects of post-war modernism and was also a furniture designer and lecturer at the Technical University of Karlsruhe. Logic, purity and clarity were his architectural maxims.

Repurposing and development as an Open Factory