# BREMEN | Projects & Construction



## Heinzer (Mar 17, 2014)

The good news is that no single person was injured by the storm in our town. The above crash of a construction crane was the biggest damage in Bremen, apart from some fallen trees and lots of debris - and that's despite the fact that the 117.4 km/h peak wind speed measured at the airport was the highest speed recorded in Germany outside of the direct coastal area and some mountain peaks in the Northern Mittelgebirge like the Harz Mountains.

Fun fact: Considering the names of lows and highs until a couple of years ago, low pressure areas only got female names and high pressure areas got male names. But this was changed, so female and male names are swapped each year, this year nevertheless is a year with female names for lows as the storm was called "Zeynep", a Turkish name, in Germany. I think you can donate a sum and then one high or low pressure area will be named as you wish.

I hope there wasn't too much destruction where y'all live.

The bureau COBE from Copenhagen who did the planning for the "Europahafenkopf" project above with the crashed crane has several more projects running in Bremen. Another interesting conversion project (albeit on a much smaller scale) is on the site of a former chocolate factory called Hachez. Bremen used to have a very strong "Nahrungs- und Genussmittelindustrie" (meaning food, alcohol and nicotine) whose feature was oftentimes very central positions in the city so that the value of the lots often increased massively in the past years leading to lots of companies selling off their production sites and move elsewhere (sometimes in the city, sometimes outside of it).

This is the obligatory aerial picture from GoogleMaps with the area circled in yellow. Note the proximity to the city core on the other side of the River Weser:










A closeup of the area:










Another more schematic map showing the absolutely central position of the area within the district strangely called "Alte Neustadt" - "Old New Town":














Hachez Quartier


Entwicklung eines gemischt genutzten, nachhaltigen und urbanen Stadtquartiers




www.hachez-quartier.de





The current situation on a grey day is little impressing with a very heterogenous picture typical of the areas with a lot of bomb damage:



















COBE was invited to come up with an idea for the conversion of the area, later several Ideenwettbewerbe (public participation workshops) were held and this is the current vision in which nearly all pre-war buildings (in brown) are to be preserved and converted into a mix of residential and commercial use:










This is a screenshot from the local TV news magazine:









(this and the following taken from: Das sind die Entwürfe für das Hachez-Areal in der Bremer Neustadt)

The street front towards "Westerstraße":










Construction is planned to start 2024. Could also become a nice improvement in the currently rather bland area.


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## Bremennorder (Oct 4, 2017)

Interesting little side note: The chocolate manufacturer HACHEZ that left the Neustadt district, making room for the abovementioned HACHEZ-Quartier conversion project, moved to the Tabakquartier area - another industrial conversion site (already shown by Heinzer earlier in this thread) where a tobacco factory was abandoned a few years ago and is currently being redeveloped into a mixed-use area:



*





HACHEZ zieht ins TABAKQUARTIER – Tabakquartier







tabakquartier.com




*
Could be the start of a nice trend where more companies leave their old sites, allowing for industrial conversion projects, and then relocate to populate similar, already completed and converted areas.


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## ibraznikov (Jun 29, 2021)

New buildings in Bremen are a perfect combination of modernism and historical culture. They fit seamlessly into the architecture that already exists. Those who worked on these projects did a tremendous job.


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## Heinzer (Mar 17, 2014)

ibraznikov said:


> New buildings in Bremen are a perfect combination of modernism and historical culture. They fit seamlessly into the architecture that already exists. Those who worked on these projects did a tremendous job.


Many of these projects are still in the planning phase and can still be messed up later in the process but I agree that things are looking quite interesting. We hope you are alive and well in Ukraine! Although I and many of my fellow countrymen wish Germany had done more to help you, we stand by you in these hard times. It seems almost petty that I go on with some conversion project while your country is being attacked by Russia so close to us. But here it goes:

Another project with a similar vibe is the "Steingutquartier" in Bremen-Nord. It planned on the site of an earthenware factory in the district of Grohn. Currently, the whole area is almost completely covered in production buildings:










The industrial buildings are only of limited charms with only a few remaining prewar "classic" buildings that will be restored:










The competition results for the redevelopment of the area were presented a couple of weeks ago:










No. 6 by SchönbornSchmitz Architects (Berlin) won the competition. The following visualizations are taken from this site: Steingutquartier Bremen - SCHÖNBORNSCHMITZ ARCHITEKTEN










It will be the typical mix of office and residential buildings, I quite like the idea of these row houses in the southern part of the area. Some visualizations, the first being the view along the S-Bahn tracks towards the northern side of the area:





































These have a somewhat preliminary character and are by no means the final designs. But again, I think -if carried out well- this could be a very urban and interesting area for Bremen.


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## ibraznikov (Jun 29, 2021)

Heinzer said:


> Many of these projects are still in the planning phase and can still be messed up later in the process but I agree that things are looking quite interesting. We hope you are alive and well in Ukraine! Although I and many of my fellow countrymen wish Germany had done more to help you, we stand by you in these hard times. It seems almost petty that I go on with some conversion project while your country is being attacked by Russia so close to us. But here it goes:
> 
> Another project with a similar vibe is the "Steingutquartier" in Bremen-Nord. It planned on the site of an earthenware factory in the district of Grohn. Currently, the whole area is almost completely covered in production buildings:
> 
> ...


Thank you for your support! We hope that good will win and that Ukraine will have bright times ahead.

It's great that you introduced me to another interesting project. This place could get a new life and a new look.


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## Hardhill (Dec 26, 2008)

Finally we had some sunshine here in Bremen, and it lasted for three weeks straight away, crazy! So I had the opportunity to shoot some pictures of the Europahafenkopf which is nearing completion. I believe the buildings should be occupied by autumn this year. The first picture is from the ground floor which will be open to public with food market etc. and the second picture is the perspective from the leisure harbour right in front of this project. From the planned restaurant on the top floor you'll probably get amazing views over the city. 



Hardhill said:


> Bilder sind zwar etwas mehr als einer Woche alt, aber trotzdem:
> 
> Im Erdgeschoss kommen die Arbeiten auch voran. Die Arkaden sind schon gut zu erkennen.
> 
> ...


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## Heinzer (Mar 17, 2014)

Heinzer said:


> I'm still looking for the right sub forum to show some projects that I deem interesting from my home town in Bremen, Germany. Since the "General Urban Development" Forum seems to be focused on single projects and thus creating very many single posts with few answers, maybe this thread is more apt as I would like to start a loose series on interesting things that are going on in Bremen, but preferably in one thread to which I (and anyone else who feels like it) will add more projects over time.
> 
> First of all though a link to my first post in the "General Urban Development" subforum about a very interesting renewal project in Vegesack, a part of Bremen that is around 25 km from the centre and forms its own little centre for the part of the city called "Bremen-Nord":
> 
> ...


Concerning the above project, detailed plans on the design of the houses have now been released, the first building shown is situated at the northern end of the development, it will house new police headquarters for Bremen-Nord:










To its side there is a new hotel planned:










Towards the water/little harbour, housing is planned:










At the southern edge of the development, a little plaza is planned which will be bordered by three buildings:



















and finally, a little midrise called Packhaus:










Sources:








Speicherqartier in Vegesack: Neuer Plan stellt Gebäude im Detail vor


Bisher gab es ausschließlich Pläne, die das Speicherquartier in Vegesack als Ganzes zeigten. Jetzt liegen erstmals Ansichten vor, die jedes Gebäude des ...




www.weser-kurier.de










Vegesacker Neustadt — Wirth Architekten!







wirth-architekten.com


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## Bremennorder (Oct 4, 2017)

Last weekend I took some photos of the Tabakquartier project that has been presented by Heinzer earlier in this thread. It involves the conversion of an old cigarette factory into a mixed-use district, focusing on repurposing buildings instead of replacing them.



Heinzer said:


>


The three old warehouses are being converted into offices. The first one is completed already, accommodating mainly businesses but also a small café and some other uses:





The second and third one are under construction:



There are six smaller white buildings. Initially the plan was to tear them down altogether. I was in favor of that because I didn't realize the potential of preserving them. However, plans were changed, and now one has become a theater, another one is now home to the biggest indoor bouldering gym in the North of Germany, a third one will become the new rehearsal room for the Bremen philharmonic orchestra, and the other three will be converted into atelier spaces for artists as well as apartments.

These are the buildings that areunder construction to become apartments and studios:







The theatre:



The climbing gym:



What a great way of reducing resource use and CO2-emissions by thinking out of the box just a little bit and not tearing everything down to replace it with the most cost-efficient buildings possible.

Seen from the rooftop of the parking garage nearby, the area looks like this, with in the background the warehouses shown earlier:



If you wonder what a newly built parking garage looks like in Germany in 2022, I've got you covered with some photos as well. In total there will be built three of the exact same parking garages:





There is room for 400 cars and 220 bikes, with the entire ground level being dedicated to bikes:



After two years of living in the Netherlands I know there are much better bike parking facilities but in general I'm very happy to see this. There is more space for bike parking dispersed throughout the area too, like this interesting bike shed:



I'm not sure what its previous function was but it's nice to see that even small things like that are not being demolished.

Finally, I took some more photos of the old factory that was completed a few years ago already and is now home to lots of offices, a restaurant, a bakery, a hotel that also makes use of a new building in the courtyard of the factory, and many more uses. The area around the factory is fully pedestrianized and provides some great urban space, taking the human scale into account with lots of things to see at eye-level, which makes it a nice place to walk or sit on one of the benches or terraces.

FABRIK means "factory":



One of the restaurants:



The new hotel that was built in the courtyard and is connected to the old factory:



The building on the left has been converted into an event space:



This photo perfectly illustrates just how inviting this space is:


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## droneriot (Apr 1, 2008)

That a converted warehouse ends up looking exactly like a generic government office is kinda ironic.


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## droneriot (Apr 1, 2008)

Random suggestion to Heinzer, would you be opposed to changing the thread to the Bremen/Oldenburg metropolitan area? There are a lot of cool projects in my home town of Oldenburg (and possibly a new football stadium if this season ends well) and I know of a couple of cool projects in my current home of the ROW/BRV district. And WHV is part of the metropolitan area so the LNG terminal expansion of the Jade Weser Port could be covered as well.

The thought of a new VfB Oldenburg stadium and my last visit to Zeven with the lot of construction they do there gave me the idea.


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## Hardhill (Dec 26, 2008)

Why don't you start your own Oldenburg-thread? And to be honest, I don't think it's going to be very interesting to add these smaller-scale projects in the smaller towns you mentioned (in quite a large region) all here in a single topic.


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## droneriot (Apr 1, 2008)

I'm not married to the suggestion and I'm fine with the thread the way it is. Though seeing an alleged adult acting like a ten year old was kinda worth it. "Make your own thread about your own toys and don't play with my toys or I'm gonna tell mommy." That's funny and uniquely German.

Anyway, just as a sidenote regarding the size or spread of our metropolitan area, try a Google Earth overlay of our region and the cities of Sao Paulo, Melbourne or Tokyo, you may be surprised. You can fit everything from Bremervörde to Vechta/Cloppenburg into Sao Paulo. Ostrhauderfehn will be in there too so we even have eight supertalls.


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## Hardhill (Dec 26, 2008)

It was just my personal opinion for the sake of the overview within this thread. Although I have to say that I only know this "Metropolitan-Area" thing from Wikipedia-articles. Or perhaps you can give me examples that show in daily life that this region can be considered as a whole? Because of federalism and the political borders of Bremen (and Bremerhaven), very little of this is achieved in practice. And if Oldenburg has many interesting projects, it deserves its own topic.

I don't think it really makes sense to compare regions and cities by its size. Viewed differently, you can also say that Bremen is much larger in terms of area than, for example, Barcelona. I think you'd already noticed that this isn't gonna take us somewhere. However, I am not the person to decide on this matter, so if the other members involved agree with your suggestion, then be my guest.


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## droneriot (Apr 1, 2008)

Überseestadt phone pics from the train. (By me.)


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