Versuchsgut Dornburg – Experiments in Sustainable Tectonics
Research and Teaching Project at Bauhaus - Universität Weimar
Students of Bachelor and Master Study Programme
The research project “Versuchsgut Dornburg – Experiments in Sustainable Tectonics” investigates strategies for an inclusive and slow transformation of existing rural buildings. The former Domäne Dornburg serves as prototypical space and is being developed through a collaborative process together with the owner Landesentwicklungsgesellschaft Thüringen (LEG), the local architectural office exnovum, local stakeholders and students from Bauhaus- Universität Weimar.
As a first step, the former cowshed was incrementally transformed into a place of learning and experimentation, intended to enable a transdisciplinary exploration of alternative and collective design, planning, and construction processes. Through this, the project addresses the question of how open-ended planning processes can contribute to strengthening appropriation, resilience, and local value creation. Next phases will focus on creating spaces for work on the ground floor, along with the associated question of the level of comfort required, before the upper floors are being transformed into temporary sleeping and living spaces.
Accordingly, we do not understand designing and building as a linear path toward a finished product, but rather as a form of design-based research that places process at its center and experimentally tests sustainable strategies—such as material cycles, reversible assemblies, and openness to appropriation—through concrete 1:1 experimentation. Under the term “sustainable tectonics,” we seek to view current challenges such as resource scarcity or working with existing structures not as obstacles to architectural quality, but as potentials for articulating specific contemporary forms of expression and a poetics of sustainable construction. In this context, the processual, fragmentary, and unfinished are made visible as architectural qualities and resources.
In order to address the complexity of the project, to bring together diverse forms of expertise, and to introduce multiple perspectives, the design and construction process was enriched through numerous experts, workshops, inputs, and site visits. These included a structural engineer; craftspeople from various trades (masonry, electrical work, stonemasonry, and heating installation); an acoustician; the VorOrt collective with a workshop on collaborative design; as well as local actors such as the mayor and other residents, who shared their experience, knowledge, and aspirations for the site.
Generic information
Research and Teaching Project at Bauhaus- Universität Weimar
Students of Bachelor and Master Study Programme
Summersemester 2025
Teaching staff
Professorship “Konstruktives Entwerfen und Erproben”:
Jun.-Prof. Tim Simon-Meyer, Luise Leon Elbern, Julius Tischler
architectural office “exnovum”: Marco Luca Reusch, Robert Anton
Students
Benjamin Bachmann, Jonas Beulich, Johannes Damm, Dohrenbusch Linn, Emde Carlotta, Cora Hoffmann, Vicka Jakubsche, Miriam Kapelle, Hannah Kettel, Laurin Mathias Queck, Benjamin Rettberg, Tomke Röhr, Annica Trunk, Benita von Palubitzki, Stella Regina Weidhaus, Leonie Christiane Bernert, Valentin Gustaf Eckardt, Eva Lina Groß, Jale Brendel Günther, Jonas Benjamin Schulze, Alma Terfort
Experts
Kevin Orlamünder (Structure)
Marius Reichenbach (water installation)
Matthias Müller (masonry)
Arnulf Bührer (acoustician)
VorOrt Kollektiv (collaborative working methods)
Sebastian Schröter (stone masonry, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
Inputs
Hans-Rudolf Meier (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
Henrik Hinterbrandner (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
Sebastian Kofink (Buero Kofink Schels)
cooperation partner
Landesentwicklungsgesellschaft Thüringen
