Marktstrasse: Strengthening a Cultural Corridor
Located in the eastern countryside, Altdöbern sits just west of Altdöberner See, a lake which has been rehabilitated from a former coal mining site.
Topic: Site inventory, analysis, and schematic design
Date: August-December 2019
Location: Altdöbern, Germany
Software: Procreate, Adobe Photoshop
Bounded on all four sides by a single street - Marktstrasse, or Market Street - the church and its grounds sit at the historic heart of the town.
A CULTURAL CORRIDOR
The church and castle grounds proper are protected by cultural monument laws as well as limitations due to private ownership. Outside the wall bounding the church grounds, are the grounds attributed to the market square. The square itself sits directly across from the town administration building and shares an immediate use and spatial tension with a Soviet cemetery, another cultural monument and a remnant from World War II.
AN AXIS LOST
This market square and associated grounds are located along the extension of the formal castle axis which would have been more prominent historically, but has since lost its visual and spatial dominance to the presence of the L53 highway which runs through Markt Strasse, bisecting the church and castle properties.
REINFORCING AXIAL RELATIONSHIPS
The design is focused centrally on the relocation of the market square from its existing locating at the cemetery to a point more central on the church axis. The borders of the proposed square are determined using extensions off the existing geometry of the church, church wall, and desired sightlines. Continuing the materiality and lines of the market square across Markt Strasse extends the pedestrian space seemingly through the street to the frontages of the adjacent buildings. This, combined with the square’s separation from the Soviet Cemetery, promotes a shift in from the cemetery towards the intersection of the two major axes. Now rooted in the castle axis, the market square binds the extensions of both castle and church, reinforcing the relationship between the two landmarks and emphasizing their paired association as dominant cultural landmarks within the town.
INCREASING PEDESTRIAN WALKABILITY
Relocating the existing bus stop further south along the street, providing bump outs, and widening the sidewalk leading up to the castle entrance to provide an on-axis approach further shifts the circulatory dominance of vehicular traffic in favor of pedestrian use by visually extending the pedestrian space through the street.
