HAUS DER MUSIK BRAUNSCHWEIG: BETWEEN GUSTAV DÜSING’S RADICAL VISION AND ADEPT’S CONTROLLED TRANSFORMATION

Preserve or Transform? Gustav Düsing and ADEPT’s Competing Visions for Haus der Musik Braunschweig. And the question: should Adaptive Reuse Be Conservative or Radical?

In Braunschweig (Germany), the transformation of the former Karstadt am Gewandhaus into the “Haus der Musik” represents far more than a simple adaptive reuse project. It embodies a question that has become central to many European cities today: how can the large commercial buildings left behind by the decline of retail be reinvented and reintegrated into collective urban life?

Among the proposals presented in the international competition launched in 2024, the project by Gustav Düsing, awarded 2 prize, stands out as one of the most contemporary and spatially ambitious responses.

Rather than erasing the existing building designed by Gottfried Böhm and Elisabeth Böhm, Gustav Düsing chooses to work through a critical continuity with the existing structure. The original architecture remains legible, yet it is carefully reinterpreted through a series of precise interventions: new circulation systems, openings, light devices, translucent materials, and open spatial sequences transform the former department store into a true urban cultural infrastructure.

At the heart of the proposal lies a vast interior atrium conceived as an “urban living room” a collective and inclusive public space open to everyone. In this vision, public space no longer stops at the street but extends deep into the building itself, becoming a continuous social landscape. The project develops a form of “interior urbanism” in which circulation spaces, balconies, and terraces are not merely functional connectors, but become places of encounter, visibility, and informal appropriation.

This approach belongs to a broader generation of European architecture that privileges open, flexible, and non-hierarchical structures over iconic and self-contained objects. One can also sense the continuity with an entire generation of contemporary German architects strongly influenced by the ideas of Cedric Price, as well as by the approaches of Lacaton & Vassal, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, and SANAA : an architecture conceived as an open, adaptable, and collective infrastructure rather than a fixed and autonomous object.

The music school unfolds along the façades, making visible from the street what usually remains hidden: rehearsals, learning processes, and the everyday practice of music. Cultural activity is no longer confined within a closed institutional building but becomes an active and visible presence within the urban landscape.

The culmination of the project is undoubtedly the concert hall suspended above the city. Filled with natural light and wrapped in a translucent acoustic skin, it floats above the rooftops of Braunschweig like a cultural lantern visible across the city. The ascent toward the hall, through repurposed escalators, terraces, and elevated walkways, transforms access to the concert space into a genuine architectural experience.

Where many adaptive reuse projects focus primarily on preserving a historic image or optimizing a program, Gustav Düsing proposes a broader reflection on the social and spatial role of cultural institutions in the contemporary city. The project embraces a certain radicality: less controlled, more porous, and more experimental, it imagines an architecture capable of accommodating unpredictability as much as institutional use.

The competition was nevertheless won by ADEPT, whose proposal convinced the jury through its balance between preservation, feasibility, and urban transformation. More rational and consensual in its approach, ADEPT’s project also develops a strong public dimension while largely preserving the existing Böhm structure. Its façade strategy, while clearly contemporary in its geometry and sculptural expression, also reinterprets some of the imagery and proportions of the original building. The new cascading façades and deep openings maintain a certain continuity with the monumentality and spatial depth characteristic of 1970s commercial architecture, while translating them into a more open and contemporary language.

The project also integrates a strong environmental strategy focused on emission reduction. Proposed measures include low-emission district heating, rooftop photovoltaics, passive cooling systems, and water-saving initiatives. The new interventions and façade elements rely on prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) components, allowing for a lower-emission construction process and more efficient assembly, which makes the project’s sustainability approach particularly compelling.

adept / technical sheet

name: haus der musik
type: competition, 1st prize
program: culture / transformation
client: friedrich georg knapp with the city of braunschweig
size: 18,000 m²
location: braunschweig, germany
year: 2025
collaborators: assmann beraten und planen, corall ingenieure, avissplan
team: martin krogh, martin laursen, anders lonka, simon poulsen, tatyana eneva, athanasia tatli, tanja jauernig, philipp macke, guido roth, paul lieser, lilit raudonat

image credits: adept, aesthetica studio (c) 

+ adept.dk/projects

gustav düsing / technical sheet

name: haus der musik
type: competition, 2nd prize
program: adaptive reuse / culture
location: braunschweig, germany
year: 2025
material: adaptive reuse
team: julian feld, moritz hagemeyer, ragna velthof, felix schuschan
engineering: schlaich bergermann partner, transsolar, müller bbm, dehne kruse brandschutzingenieure
photos: out of ram (c) 

+ gustav-duesing.com

If ADEPT’s proposal appears today as the most realistic solution for the transformation of the site, it is also because the project remains less radical and therefore more reassuring for the political, economic, and institutional actors involved. Its measured transformation strategy, controlled architectural language, and careful balance between preservation and renewal offer a vision that is immediately legible and highly feasible. By contrast, Gustav Düsing’s proposal advanced a more experimental and open-ended reflection on collective use, making it one of the most ambitious and contemporary architectural visions of what a cultural institution in the post-retail European city could become.

Interestingly, this debate resonates with another recent German project: the Oberamteistraße Museum by PARTICLE in Reutlingen. Although very different in scale and program, both projects engage with similar architectural questions currently emerging across Germany: how should contemporary architecture relate to historical urban fabric, inherited construction cultures, and collective memory? In the case of PARTICLE’s museum project, the intervention reinterprets medieval typologies, timber construction traditions, and the material language of the region through a contemporary architectural skin. Rather than reproducing history literally, the project abstracts and transforms historical codes into a new architectural expression.

A similar attitude can be observed in ADEPT’s façade strategy for Haus der Musik. While clearly contemporary in form and geometry, the project reworks the depth, rhythm, and monumentality of the former commercial building into a new civic image. In both cases, the façade becomes more than an envelope: it acts as an interface between memory and reinvention, between preservation and transformation. These projects suggest that contemporary German architecture is increasingly less interested in pure reconstruction or total rupture, and more engaged in the reinterpretation of architectural identities through materiality, structure, and skin. The dialogue between these approaches, from PARTICLE’s reinterpretation of medieval urban fabric to ADEPT and Gustav Düsing’s transformation of post-retail infrastructure, reveals a broader architectural culture questioning how cities can evolve without losing the spatial and historical depth that defines them.  

Ultimately, the question raised at the beginning of this article, Preserve or Transform? Gustav Düsing and ADEPT’s Competing Visions for Haus der Musik Braunschweig, remains entirely open. Should adaptive reuse be conservative or radical? The answer is perhaps less binary than it first appears. As these projects demonstrate, very different architectural approaches can both produce compelling, intelligent, and culturally relevant responses while still successfully accommodating the required program and public uses.
From Gustav Düsing’s open-ended and experimental interpretation of the post-retail city to ADEPT’s more controlled and carefully mediated transformation, both proposals reveal legitimate and valuable ways of engaging with the existing city. Likewise, projects such as the Oberamteistraße Museum by PARTICLE further show how contemporary architecture in Germany is increasingly navigating between preservation, reinterpretation, material continuity, and new architectural identities.

What these projects ultimately make clear is that adaptive reuse is no longer simply a technical or heritage question, but a cultural and political one. The architectural language adopted, whether radical or restrained, often reflects broader political, economic, and institutional choices that extend beyond the sole architectural quality of a proposal.