About us - Can it finally go away? Building in existing buildings - why it's worth thinking about old and new together in the city

If you stand in front of WERK3 in Werksviertel-Mitte today, which houses dozens of restaurants, stores as well as offices and artists‘ studios, it is difficult at first to imagine that this huge, vibrant orange block was once built in the 1950s to house the production lines of the food manufacturer Pfanni. In fact, dumplings and mashed potatoes were produced in WERK3 until 1994.

You could have a similar experience at the WERK7 theater. Of course, the industrial charm of the theater immediately catches the eye. However, it is not an architectural stylistic device here, but is due to the history of the building. For decades, it was a potato warehouse. If you look a few meters further on at the climbing routes in the 30-metre-high shafts of the Heavens Gate climbing and bouldering hall in WERK4, you think: What an ingenious construction. But the long shafts were not designed for climbing at all. They are converted silos that used to store the potato flakes that Pfanni produced using a specially developed process and which formed the basis of the company’s product range.

One of the sustainable decisions made during the planning of the urban district was not to simply tear down the majority of the old industrial buildings in Werksviertel-Mitte.

Of the old building fabric, 85,025 tons of concrete, masonry and steel remained. If this amount of building materials had been newly produced and delivered, 7090 tons of CO2 would have been emitted and 72 million MJ of energy would have been consumed. This corresponds to around two thirds of the energy that the Werksviertel-Mitte consumes in a year.

In addition to WERK3, WERK4 and the WERK7 theater, the WERK1 – formerly an administration building, now a business incubator – was also preserved in Werksviertel-Mitte. In the case of the Technikum – once an innovation and test laboratory, now an event location – the building in the existing structure even went so far as to integrate the old building into the new WERK13 building.

But renovating existing buildings doesn’t just have a sustainable impact. The more deeply you explore the possibilities, the more you realize what truly brings a city or a neighborhood to life: the diversity of uses made possible in the squares, streets, and spaces. And these aren’t dictated by a stone shell, but are left entirely to human creativity. And when that creativity is given free rein, there’s no need to tear down the old employee cafeteria at a manufacturing site—instead, you can turn it into an event venue where people can play trivia or dance. Why not stop by the NachtKantine at Werksviertel-Mitte? You’ll be surprised at how new the old can be.