Atelier Dreiseitl: Critiques and Challenges

In Town Hall Square in Hattersheim, Germany, and Lindenplatz in Gummersbach, Germany, Atelier Dreiseitl designed intriguing new spaces to encourage civic use.  By integrating modern urban fountains, Atelier Dreiseitl created new experiences and a unique sense of place.  Unlike many town squares and plazas that contain fountains, Atelier Dreiseitl’s designs integrate the water features into the design, creating a new, modern urban fountain.

 

In Hattersheim’s Town Hall Square, Herbert Dreiseitl’s intricately designed stairs leading into the square act as the square’s focal artistic element.  Here, water plays an essential role in both the aesthetic qualities of the space and in communicating Dreiseitl’s ideas about urban water processes.  In Lindenplatz, participatory water sculpture encourages interaction with the physical environment, thereby creating new experiences of space, art, water, and social interaction.

 

The aesthetic qualities of Atelier Dreiseitl’s designs create new experiences and places, which encourage civic use. In Town Hall Square in Hattersheim and Lindenplatz, the use of water in artistic urban design creates new urban landscapes. The designs of these spaces appear to contribute to meaningful public use; by redesigning formerly stale spaces, Atelier Dreiseitl is able to bring civic life back to these squares.

 

While encouraging public use through the design of public spaces is a fundamental goal of any urban designer or landscape architect, Atelier Dreiseitl has much broader goals for its projects as well. The main motivation for Atelier Dreiseitl’s designs of public squares is to use the experience of water in such a way to help people discover water’s essential role in the urban environment.  Dreiseitl’s goal is to bring aesthetics together with functional water systems to create designs that have a high social and cultural value.  Through the integration of art, water, and functional water systems, Atelier Dreiseitl hopes to contribute to individual and societal understandings of urban water processes and sustainable water management.

The primary goal of Atelier Dreiseitl’s work is to integrate artistic form and ecological function in order to communicate the role of water processes in the urban environment.  Thus, the extent to which the designs are able to accomplish this goal determines the ultimate success of the projects.

 

As discussed in the case study section of this website, the Hattersheim and Gummersbach projects are only somewhat successful at communicating Atelier Dreiseitl’s philosophies about the role of water in the urban environment to the general public.  Hattersheim’s design demonstrates the commonalities between urban and rural water processes. While the artistic elements might evoke symbols of the relationship between ideas of urban nature and rural nature, the design does not necessarily connect to the real processes at work. The design of Lindenplatz in Gummersbach expresses the sounds, textures, and the climate effects of water. However, the actual processes that connect these intrinsic qualities of water to the urban environment are not apparent.

One possible reason for the disconnection between the water art and the ability to communicate the urban water process might be that the functional systems controlling the waterscapes are hidden.  Although the waterscapes are designed to communicate the role of water in the urban environment, none of the systems that control the waterscapes is visible. Thus, to the observer, the water in Atelier Dreiseitl’s waterscapes functions in the same ways as in traditional urban fountains. Without any indication of the complex systems behind the water art, people have no way to relate to the processes at work or to how the processes relate to the urban environment.  Perhaps if the engineering components of the Atelier Dreiseitl water features were accessible to the public, the projects would better communicate the processes at work and the importance of urban water process.

One explanation for Atelier Dreiseitl’s choice to hide the functional systems of the waterscapes might be artistic: exposing the engineering elements would take away from the artistic qualities of the design.  However, if this were the case, one might expect that Atelier Dreiseitl would find other outlets for describing how the functional elements of the system contribute to existing urban water process on site and how the waterscape contributes to ecological design.  However, the Atelier Dreiseitl website and Dreiseitl’s recent book Waterscapes has very little information on the general engineering used in the projects and no details about specific systems.  If this were proprietary information, one would expect to at least find descriptions of the ecological design components; however this is not the case. A more likely explanation is that the waterscapes do not address Atelier Dreiseitl’s philosophies in meaningful ways.  Perhaps the reason for the lack of information on the engineering aspects of these projects is because Atelier Dreiseitl does not want to advertise the shortcomings of what its projects claim to do.

There is surprisingly little current literature discussing Atelier Dreiseitl’s projects and even less that takes a critical stance in its assessment of Atelier Dreiseitl’s projects.

Although Atelier Dreiseitl has been successful in designing intriguing public spaces that encourages new public uses, its designs do not necessarily follow through on the claims of integrating ecological function with art and urban design.

 

However, there are many reasons why Atelier Dreiseitl has yet to reach its goals. Innovative design is hard to accomplish, especially when complex water regulations  limit the firm’s ability to implement certain designs, financing constraints, and the difficulties that come with clients who want copies of projects from the firm’s portfolio without necessarily supporting innovation.

While Atelier Dreiseitl’s current approach may not be as successful as it could be, its contributions to the field should not be overlooked.