The Existing as a Precondition
Methodical Toolkit for Engaging with Department Store Buildings of the 1960s and 1970s

The primary motivation of this work stems from a fascination with buildings from the 1960s and 1970s – both for their physical presence within the urban fabric and as rational, pragmatically constructed large-scale structures. Representing nearly a third of Europe’s building stock, these structures form a late-modernist legacy that challenges our relationship with the existing built environment. Department stores stand out as particularly prototypical, being not only rationally organized in construction and typology but also embodying the capitalist ethos of democratized consumerism. In many ways, they can therefore be understood as materialized capitalism. Today, many of these buildings face the end of their first lifecycle, requiring renovation but often being at risk of demolition – a condition driven by economic systems that neglect ecological concerns.

Can an architectural practice also mean to build less and foreground knowledge production to avoid ideologically and economically motivated demolition? Beyond preservation, we need strategies for documentation, analysis and evaluation to inform the design process. By examining department stores from the 1960s and 1970s, this project explores how different representational tools can serve for understanding and assessing potentials of existing structures. Not only to capture a different perspective but also to influences decision-making processes, shaping how buildings are evaluated and reused in parts or as a whole. How can these tools be expanded or reconfigured to support circular strategies in architecture? 

Since any transformation begins with documentation, representation is an active design tool rather than a passive means of recording. By investigating various tools, the research aims to establish a methodological framework for reusing existing structures, questioning how we see, categorize, and reimagine architecture and to bridge technical, aesthetic, and material considerations – positioning reuse as an integral rather than exceptional architectural practice and a design strategy to start from what is already there.

This dissertation project is being conducted within the TUM Innovation Network Collaborative Construction.
(dt. Bestand als Bedingung – Methodisches Toolkit zum Umgang mit Warenhausbauten der 1960er und 1970er Jahre)

Contact: Tobias Fink