rem koolhaas: projects
zentrum für kunst und medientechnologie

While, with the imminence of a united Europe, each city positions itself by claiming - and if necessary constructing - maximum centrality, Karlsruhe is Europe's geographical middle, a condition it can therefore afford to ignore. It prefers the oblivious pose of "typical West German city at the end of the 20th century." Its citizens serenely inhabit the baroque idyll of their reconstructed townscape, united in their determination to resist unpleasantness from wherever it may come. It matters little that, like each historical city in Europe, their town has been thoroughly modernized: on top of a new parking garage, its train station is being extended to receive the IDZ, Germany's slower equivalent of the French TGV. Surrounded by twenties Seidlungen, suburbs, shopping centers, and other centers, and other emblems of the non-hierarchical world, the city is dwarfed by its own perifery. But conceptually its 'heart' will always remain the center: Kaiserstrasse, its main pedestrian shopping street; townsquare; Schloss; university; the surrounding Walder.

Take futuristic institution - SKM, Zentrum für kunst und medientechnologie, also known as the Electronic Bauhaus - and place it in this context! Projected on the perimeter of a Baroque town, on a narrow strip of land on the wrong side of the station and tracks, it faces on- and off- ramps of the Autobahn.

Its program amalgamates a museum of media art; a museum of contemporary art; research and production facilities for music, video, and virtual reality; a theater for media; lecture hall; media library (a future hochschule für media); etc. It represents a laboratory open to the public- a huge apparutus to investigate, once and for all, the elusive connection between kunst and technologie, a Darwinian area where classical and electronic media can compete with and influence each other.

To generate density, exploit proximity, provoke tension, maximize friction, organize in-betweens, promote filtering, sponsor indentity and stimulate blurring, the entire program is incorporated in a single container - 43 x 43 x 58 meters.

excerpt from S, M, L, XL

links:
http://www.ingenieurgruppe-bauen.de/Projekte/Hochbau/HBPrj51B.htm
http://www.zkm.de