The translocation as an instrument of town-planning

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Christian Raabe
• Subject Area: Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 324472956

This project matches some of the key topics and touches a broad variety of questions in architecture and urban planning combined with various questions within the field of cultural heritage sciences. Its main purpose is to have a close look on the use of translocation of buildings or parts of those in German urban design troughout 20th century but especially after World War II. Building shifting was used to create appearingly historic city centres by using real historic materials and even complete buildings from all over the cities and their surroundings. These efforts were made to bring back or preserve parts of the cultural landscape. Most Old Towns of German cities had been destroyed by war and one way to reconstruct something near to the former cityscape was translocation. Later on a period called urban renewal affected most German Cities with huge losses of historic buildings. Even this led to forming Old Towns or at least spots of tradition by making use of translocation. In Germany an actual discussion of reconstruction has risen since cities like Frankfurt, Potsdam and others do recreate their Old Towns and city centres. But mainly the discussion neglects translocation as a type of cityscape reconstruction, because in fact there is no overviewing study existing which would be very helpful.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants