German Water Tower
Published by misha in Chillin, Europe, Germany, History, Museums, Travel Stories
There is always connection between history and design. I present Water Tower in Essen, Germany which has been transformed from historic water tower into an imaginative space for living and working.
The reconstruction shows a fusion of old and new with lasting environmental considerations. The design prevented demolition and maintained the water tower as part of the heritage landscape. The potential of the structure remained untapped until 2002, then with little alteration to the exterior, the water tower was transformed into an eight-story, multy-use building.
The first level serves as an office and the lofty top level unit offers conference space with views of the surrounding natural landscape. The next upper levels offers two-storey appartments, which are welcoming the sun and the moon with open flowing floor plans and high ceilings.
The embodied energy in existing materials has been diluted through an extension of the structure’s viability. Through reuse and adaptation the cost of demolition, trucking and land filling debris, the manufacturing, transport and installation of new structural materials has been eliminated. The result is a quiet lesson in “stealth green†– reuse brings both ecological and cultural advantages.
