Beautiful court

111 years

Historic building fabric can achieve significant things: it is a repository of the past, it inspires the present with its design from other eras by providing information about often forgotten formal and functional qualities, it hands over its architecture to us as a basis for adaptation and further construction, and is thus sustainable etc.

This is also the case with a former chamber building of a long abandoned and urban repurposed barracks in Tübingen. When renovation and conversion work began in 2018, the building was already 111 years old. In 2021, it was handed over to its new purpose and offers the local, probate and guardianship court a place that can act as described above, combined with the wish of the monument preservation authorities to avoid major design interventions in favor of the original substance.

Dannien Roller, an architectural firm from Tübingen, implemented this with sensitivity, which is already signaled by the subtly selected new lettering “Amtsgericht” above the portal. It was intended to fit intuitively into the restored façade elevation, whose balanced appearance is characterized by horizontal lines and entrance arches. From the perspective of interior design adaptation to the new functions, these also form part of an attractive motif that combines pleasantly with the contemporary small-scale molding of the windows and their green-gray wood profiles.

Context-sensitive

Here, too, context-sensitive action was taken: the garage doors located at the rear of the building were retained and now supply the courtrooms and meeting rooms with light. Although the old wooden door leaves had to be removed for this purpose – the glass panes replacing them were set deep into the arches to keep the original entrance traceable. The fact that a great deal had to be done to make the building structurally sound – replacement of the foundations, lowering of the floor slab, insertion of a reinforced concrete ceiling to the upper floor – is indicated by the construction, which is kept visible in the form of angular reinforced concrete columns, both in the entrance and in the courtrooms.

Walls were roughly plastered in warm light gray, a light, sanded exposed screed stands in harmonious contrast to white ceilings and the light oak wood of the room furnishings. The latter determines the interior design of the courtrooms and conference rooms on the first floor, as well as the internal workrooms for judges and staff and the registries on the two upper floors and the attic.