The Building

The site is expected to become the property of the Federal Bauakademie Foundation in the summer of 2022. By that time, the prerequisites for its registration in the land register must be fulfilled. In August 2021, the Federal Bauakademie Foundation bought the site from the State of Berlin at market value for a preliminary purchase price of EUR 19.8 million.

In the 1990s, the Bauakademie site was transferred from the Federal Government to the State of Berlin, which originally wanted to implement the project itself. The Capital City Financing Agreement of 2017 stipulated that the Federal Bauakademie Foundation can acquire the property at full market value.

The Federal Bauakademie Foundation is the client. The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning is responsible for the project management. The client is supported by the Foundation’s scientific team, the Competition think tank, and external experts.

In compliance with the binding land-use plan, the future building will follow the original plans of Schinkel’s Bauakademie in terms of cubature and number of full stories. Whether a reconstructed or a newly designed facade will be built, or whether a hybrid solution will be found, is to be decided in the Competition think tank and an open international architectural design competition.

The spatial concept for the new building will facilitate flexible use and interdisciplinary work. The historical room layout, with Schinkel’s innovative planning grid, can serve as inspiration for this.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s estate is administered by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, not by the Federal Bauakademie Foundation, so there will be no Schinkelmuseum in the building. However, the Bauakademie will explore the life’s work of Schinkel in a variety of ways.

Through its work, the Federal Bauakademie Foundation follows in the footsteps of Karl Friedrich Schinkel as an innovator and visionary. In his spirit, it will employ the most modern means to create an optimally usable building that meets high standards for both its energy and resource efficiency and its flexibility of use.

Once the building has been built, it will be a place that is open to anyone involved with or interested in construction. First and foremost, the building is conceived as a meeting point, event venue and research center. It will be a home to exhibitions, workshops, conferences, places to eat and drink, shops and a range of service offerings.

The spatial program provides an overview of the allocation of spaces and their requirements and, as the competition progresses, serves as the basis for designing the building. The spatial use concept will be the basis for space planning.

Spaces with maximum flexibility of use showcase the platform character of the Bauakademie. The interdisciplinary network’s cooperation partners will find inspiration and a suitable infrastructure here for their daily work and their events.

The objective of the programmatic competition was to generate ideas for how the building could function and types of events it could host. Use concepts and the corresponding spatial allocations within the future building were chosen. Different proposals for the facade design were also made. The program competition served as the groundwork for the upcoming architectural design competition.

The objective of the architectural design competition is to select a design for constructing the project. The rules of such competitions are governed by federal law. Every competition is based on a description of the task, the so-called competition program. The competition program is divided into the procedural rules, an explanation of the architectural mission, and the planning basis.

The start of construction is one of the most important milestones for a building project. The exact schedule will be determined after the competition has been held. The Federal Bauakademie Foundation will keep the public informed as the planning progresses and the scheduling gets more concrete.

By resolution of the German Bundestag, EUR 62 million have been appropriated for construction. A tangible assessment of construction costs can only be made after the architectural design competition. However, the economic viability of the project is an important factor for evaluating the competition.