Dance-house by the railway – a production and cultural venue in Meidling

The starting point for this thesis is the study of the built works by the little-known Danish architect Hans Christian Hansen (1901-1978), who worked as a project leader at the office of the City Architect in Copenhagen between 1930 and 1970 under the politics of the welfare state. His neglected architectural heritage is characterised by an extraordinary handling of material and form and features a diverse historical and cultural context. Despite his work’s relevance to Copenhagen’s cityscape and history, nowadays many of his buildings have fallen into oblivion or are endangered by demolition.

This project highlights and systematises the most important themes of Hansen’s architectural language on the basis of photos, analytical drawings and texts that emerged from the study. The reinterpretation of these selected motives provided the cornerstone for an individual design. This is a building for contemporary dance performances, which also facilitates industrial usage, located in the former working-class district of Meidling, directly next to the historic workers’ housing of the Südbahngesellschaft.

The architectural proposal for a venue for community encounters and exchanges in an area with rich social and cultural diversity, but with a lack of renowned cultural offerings, aims to address this current imbalance. The presented project for a dance-house places a special emphasis on the secluded interior space and considers the load-bearing structural units as central design elements. The developed simplistic building form is covered with a copper façade cladding and positions itself in a cautious dialogue with the surroundings.

References:
Sestoft, Jorgen. “Arbeiten von Hans Chr. Hansen.” In: Arkitektur DK, 4 (1972), 156-157.