Urban Prototype is the portrait of a German city built to be used for military urban training. Intended to represent the infrastructure of an urban agglomeration, the 520 buildings are a summary of universal facades, spatial fragments, empty rooms.
Built from a system of concrete slabs, the city of Schnöggersburg is an architectural backdrop. It is a distilled architecture of minimal exterior shells. The results are pragmatic architecture prototypes where abstract connotation defines. Combining elements from different regions and cultures the scenes are familiar but can not be pinpointed to an exact location.
Content and function is implied through suggestion. It asks how abstract can a building be and still be recognized as a certain typology? More than a modular construction kit, it relies on the understanding of distinct peculiarities.
Typologies refer to the function of the buildings within the city. These references are made either through the building shells or through a billboard that describes the function. What elements reveal what function the building has in itself?
A suggested dystopia of empty enclosure, eerie yet so familiar.
Hannes Heitmüller is a trained architect and architectural photographer based in Hamburg, Germany. He is specialized in the documentation of the built environment. Observing natural landscapes and inhabited spaces, the impact of human presence.
© text and pictures by Hannes Heitmüller