Claus Anderhalten

Profile

Claus Anderhalten: Originally I wanted to study archaeology. Engaging with history has always fascinated me. Immediately after graduation, I started working for Peter Kulka in Cologne where I was involved in the construction of the Saxony State Parliament in Dresden. I was part of the project from the competition phase onwards. It was a matter of linking the contemporary architecture of the assembly hall with a simple building from the 1920s. So the theme of working with existing buildings has been a concern since the very beginning of my professional life.

The first commission was for the German Architecture Centre (DAZ) – the conversion of a factory building from 1905. I studied its architectural history in order to understand how such a building could be meaningfully added to. One of the next projects was to convert a Baroque manor in Brandenburg. Under the GDR, it had been used for school summer camps, and now it was to be turned into an administrative building.

The small building [a sheep shed -ed.] was completely run down, but it had a special energy and presence – purely in terms of the material. We thought for a long time about how to preserve these historical traces without losing that energy. We asked ourselves how to go about adding new elements that competed with but did not overpower the old… Through this project, we realized that the old has to be given a value of its own. An old building is very sensitive. Many things are easily destroyed that could actually be preserved. Like traces of history.