Informazioni sul corso

Official Course Description
SLEEPING HOUSES

When we picture a hotel room, we usually imagine the same thing: a small, characterless space reduced to the essentials—bed, bedside tables, a desk, and a flatscreen TV murmuring news in a language we barely understand. Apart from minor differences in finishes or the view outside, the image is almost universal. As architects, we even carry its plan in our heads: a fully standardized typology.

In our studio, that banality becomes a field for experimentation. Students will choose an existing structure in Darmstadt - an empty building, a gap site, a place that has lost its function - and transform it into a hotel. The semester begins at the smallest scale: a single object becomes the starting point for rooms and ultimately for the entire hotel.

We challenge a typology typically shaped by comfort, convenience, and efficiency and ask what a hotel could offer the city. Can a personal design logic turn sterile rooms into spaces with character? And can the hotel, beyond being a stack of rooms with a lobby, reclaim its role as an urban social hub?
 
The Georg-Moller-Prize will be awarded as part of the studio. An external jury will select and honour the best projects with prize money.