STUDENT FIELD TRIP TO FRANKFURT
Back in May, Binke Lenhardt took her students from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund on a short but intense excursion to Frankfurt and Offenbach.
The trip was organized in collaboration with Crossboundaries Frankfurt and led by Binke Lenhardt and Antje Voigt, sharing both practical expertise and process-based design thinking with the students.
The focus: an in-depth introduction to the programming phase – or Phase 0 – of the architectural planning process, followed by a site visit.
Hosted in the BDA Hessen space in Frankfurt, a workshop explored key steps of the programming phase: identifying stakeholder roles, discussing user needs, and formulating clear project goals.
The site visit took the students to the real-life case behind their current semester project: the transformation of a 1970s school building in Offenbach. The assignment challenges them to work with the existing structure, interpret a given room program, and rethink the layout based on contemporary pedagogical concepts like cluster-based learning.
A visit to the Römerstadtschule in Frankfurt, designed by Trapez Architektur, a cluster school completed in 2022, provided additional insights and inspiration.
The programming phase – when approached as a truly participatory process – can be a powerful tool for creating more sustainable, context-specific, and needs-driven architecture.
Thanks again to the BDA Hessen e.V. for providing their space, the City of Frankfurt am Main, Amt für Bau und Immobilien, and the City of Offenbach am Main, Amt für Planen und Bauen for their support and introduction to the buildings we visited.
