Frank Seiler: JENA PARADIES - Schriftzug, Metallwerkstoffe, 4,50 m x 36 m, Jena-Neulobeda, Lobdeburgtunnel, westliche Einfahrt

Jena Paradies

After the Car-oriented City: A Concept for Urban Design

City of Jena, "eastern Munich", the super-boom-city, at the top of the city-rankings in commercial journals „Handelsblatt“ und „Capital“, is now off on a sidetrack. After 2017, when the fast track Munich-Berlin is finished, unfortunatelly no ICE trains will be stoping in Jena. Fobbed off with regional trains connecting small cities, the prospects for Jena's five train stations are rather bleak. However, it need not be so.

In our design seminar we want to plan for a future, in which the traffic turnaround is implemented: fifty percent less car traffic, fifty percent more bike, pedestrian and train traffic. In this way, the five train stations can, by a windfall, become a decentralized ragional transportation that connects close-timed and fast big parts of the city of Jena with the ICE junction in Erfurt. This will result in five local development centers that, as urban focal points, will act as initiators of a mobility-based urban renewal.

Based on one of the locations, we want to explore chances for a life in the city, which emerge from the new mobility forms; how does urban space change, how do the quarters around the train station change?

The design seminar is part three of multi-semestral tri-city project, where we deal with quarters around train stations successively in Weimar, Erfurt and Jena. It is connected with the obligatory block seminar „Urban modules“ (including excursion to Munich), and could be complemented by the seminar „Poetry and Politics of Walking“.

"Layoutcoaching" workshop is integral part of the design project. Additionally, final presentation will be executed in the form of a jury committee consisted of external design critics and experts. The design project is funded through the "Lehrfonds der Bauhaus-Universität".

Accompanying  seminar:
"Urban modules", Chair of Urban Planning and Urban Design 1 (obligatory)

Optional:
Seminar "Poetry and Politics of Walking“, Chair of Urban Planning and Urban Design 1

Students' final works