In the design project Cottbus Central Campus – Studying, Teaching, Research, students explored the future expansion of the BTU campus. Rather than focusing on an individual building, the starting point was the campus as part of the city: its connections to existing urban structures, its open spaces and pathways, and the question of how new places for research, teaching, and student life can form a coherent whole.

The semester was structured as an integrated project in collaboration with the Department of Urban Design, with additional input from Landscape Architecture at selected stages. During the first two months, students developed urban design concepts at a scale of 1:1000. Only then did the focus shift from the campus to the individual building: one element of the previously developed structure was selected and further developed as a specific university building. Fifth-semester students worked in pairs based on a predefined spatial program, while Bachelor’s thesis students independently defined the use, size, and program of their buildings.

A two-day excursion to Berlin took the students from Freie Universität and TU Berlin to research buildings in Adlershof and the Grimm Centre. These built examples demonstrated different approaches to spatially organizing learning, research, and collaborative work, and to integrating these activities into a campus or the wider urban fabric.

Architecture supervision: Prof. Ilija Vukorep, Caroline Framont
Urban Design supervision: Prof. Verena Schmidt, Alice Geletey
Landscape Architecture: Prof. Anna Lundqvist

Students: Asmaa Alawoa, Aysem Bacak, Miray Bozkurt, Melanie Brade, Simone Da Canal, Vivian Dik, Nancy Guedes Faerber, Erik Hanke, Manuel Sebastian Haselwander, Claudia Hoedl, Maryam Jabboory, Rabia Karadeniz, Jasmin Kiesow, Anna Motte, Kelvin Damian Nieves Betancourt, Comfort Durowaa Nimo, Geraldine Romy Tabata Pohle, Neda Rangelova, Antonia Margarete Rau, Mariana Rodopiano Pereira, Melanie Schlueter, Hanna Schmeling, Lucie Schorstaedt, Tristan Laurin Schwarz, Mohamad Shalan Hamdan, Jan Strobl, Lisa Struck, Buesra Tekin, Marios Thermos.