Julia Feix

The urban situation of the site at Konstanz is very special: there’s the waterfront and the border with
Switzerland, the marina, sports facilities and the station - the waterfront-walk as well as the harbour
promenade end here quite awkwardly. In this situation I understand the project to be a link picking up
existing structures/paths, reacting to or completing them. By doing so, the building naturally becomes
part of the promenade, at the same time being its „up-station“. It’s being USED by the stroller/walker
and with a certain implicitness it becomes a scenic element.

Apart from the flaneur/walker/stroller there is also the hotel-/concert guest/player/businessman- a
different kind of user and therefore a different way of arriving (assuming that somebody moving into a
hotel room or visiting a concert wouldn’t do that on foot). You drive up – by car, by boat, by taxi.
I break away from the turbulences and the business of the harbour-promenade by creating a preliminary
park which, at the same time, provides the necessary distance and the address of my project.
It’s not the continuity of the city on the one hand and the landscape on the other which is crucial, but it’s
the sequence of spaces I create: city – park – culture – lake.

The building itself evolves from the relationship of the different typologies to the site: the completely
site-negating casino, without daylight, fully air-conditioned (to make the player lose track of time), as
opposed to the hotel, the vertical dominance, prominent, offering its guests as much of its surroundings
as possible, and of course the concert-hall, orientated to the water with the omnipresence of the lakepanorama.

The building works as a mediator not only in the urban context but internally as well – the plain
concentrates the different typologies at one point and creates interfaces. Even the ”open” parking garage
which runs from under the drive-way right into the building (the unfolding of the park makes it possible
to have natural daylight and ventilation) is being treated equally to the other typologies.

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