Mannheim's Connection

2013

Team Point of view
Mannheim’s Connection is the story of a boundary (B38) growing to become a vector of urban continuity. The systemic strategy it presents unveils potential relations between previously disconnected urban areas. The new intense mixed sector alternates newly built areas with structuring green voids, giving an intense depth of field to the bi-dimensional image of B38’s entrance to Mannheim. The progressive development of a new intermodal public transport network optimizes access to the site locally while amplifying its attractiveness at regional scale. Mannheim’s Connection is an open evolving story, with structuring episodes and a series of urban protagonists gradually emerging from a process that re-combines inherited urban forms, innovative mobility and enhanced landscapes.

Jury Point of view
Mannheim’s Connection is convincing with a design that re-formulates the entrance to the city as a space to be experienced and used. It links intelligently with the existing buildings in Benjamin Franklin Village and develops them towards the B 38 road in dense, mixed-utility building clusters rhythmically alternating with green spaces on the route into the city. The project is a very sustainable conceptual contribution to the “adaptable city”. The project offers the best way to combine the local challenges of a peripheral urban situation and military conversion with the vision of a “post-car-friendly” town.

2014-2023
After Europan competition, the 150 ha strategic site was rebaptized “The Franklin Factory” giving birth to a metropolitan-scale transformative process and the management of the area passed from the Planning office of the city (client of Europan), to MWSP, the city’s public-private development company. MWSP and the city of Mannheim launched an international restrained competition, for urban and landscape design, on a 35 Ha area along B38, “The Columbus Quartier”. The Columbus quartier program, proposed by the client and his private commercial investors, was centred on commercial and hybrid urbanism. The competition was open to 15 offices and the former Europan selected teams where invited to join the competition. The team led by KH STUDIO – architecture urbanisme paysage, with EEM & dott. Schmelzer, ended up winning the first prize with a proposal which is the clear heritage of “Mannheim’s Connection” vision.
The team then obtained a full mission for a “rahmenplan”, i.e. Urban Plan definition (plus a 180 pages guidelines book - achieved in 2017); and an open-spaces “design and realization” full mission on 10 Ha (to be achieved before 2022).
The open-space palimpsest proposed by KH in Europan is essentially kept in the structure of the Columbus Quartier. The project showed the capacity to adapt and negotiates with private investors, while securing, in spatial and environmental terms, the best conditions for the medium- and long-term scenario. The palimpsest is conceived in order to prepare and support the post-commercial phase of the urban sector (private investors being on site for average 15 years). “The project of time” became ever since a common method to all of KH’s strategic projects.
Time scales radically changed during the process for geopolitical reasons (USA military presence; international migrants’ crisis; city/region negotiations; coronavirus). The team had to deal with the process impact of unexpected historic events, the military site being very sensitive to certain issues. Nevertheless, the mobility and landscape palimpsest proved its virtues by providing a long-lasting support for the future evolution of land value associated to urban transformations.
In 2019 the transformation of B38 into an urban boulevard has been financed with €52 million at the horizon of 2030. This grants a strong future for the vision of Mannheim’s Connection. The system of transversal parks along B38 will see birth in the next years and in the medium term they will strongly contribute making the former heavy infrastructure B38 an original kind of space, bridging quartiers and communities.
2023 - The open-space design mission for the two parks "Columbus Park" and "Friendship Park" and for the Ecological connector - "Columbus Path", a bike-and pedestrian connective corridor, is completed.
The parks now integrate two pedestrian & bike bridges (object of international competitions to be held), a mulficunctional pavillon for eco-mobility and study, and a system of playgrounds with original designs from the team.

2023 - 2024
2023 - Following a new competition launched by MVV - Electric Company, the team wins the first prize for the "MVV Ladehub Pavillon" in the Friendship Park. The project re-invents a modernist gas-station from the '50s and transforms it into a multifunctional pavilion in the park. The pavilion both serves as a multimodal hub to recharge electric vehicles and as a place where to study, work and meet people. A serving hub within the Friendship Park.
The MVV Pavillon is one of the local identity monuments that the Europan Project proposed to protect and integrate in the general planning for the Franklin district in order to keep trace of the history of the district within the wider transformation the conversion process would birng. The goal of the project being to make the landscape proposal also a cultural future-oriented proposal.

2024 - The MVV Pavillon is completed and opens to the public. - The building site of the two parks "Columbus Park" and "Friendship Park", starts. The team has the full mission - project management and site supervision of the building site for all open spaces.