Grüne Zitadelle von Magdeburg, or the Green Citadel of Magdeburg, is a colorful complex of apartments, shops, offices, cafes, a hotel, and even a kindergarten. The project is the last design of the late Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an Austrian alternative architect. He referred to his project as an ”oasis for humanity and nature in a sea of rational houses”.
The Grüne Zitadelle is one of the first prefabricated slab buildings constructed in Germany.
There was an old-fashioned prefabricated building with flats in the same spot before the Grüne Zitadelle, but the housing cooperative in Magdeburg asked Hundertwasser for a redesigned project in 1995. However, the plan was abandoned and Hundertwasser passed away in 2000. 3 years after his death, his project was put into action. He was still working on the Grüne Zitadelle before his death, so it is known as his last project.
Hundertwasser believed that architecture and the well-being of humans were closely related to each other. According to him, architecture was the ”3rd skin” of human beings, and they could design it just like their 1st(natural skin) and 2nd skin (clothes). He considered meeting humans back with nature as the architect’s responsibility. For example, ”window right” and ”tree obligation”, two concepts of his designs, are visible in Grüne Zitadelle as he wanted to create individual living spaces at one with nature. There are 55 individually designed apartments.
The project was completed in 2005 and is located at the Magdeburg’s Cathedral Square where buildings are a mix of Baroque, Gothic, and classical styles. However, the Grüne Zitadelle is in total contrast with the surrounding buildings. Since Magdeburg was once a fortified city, the project is called a ”citadel”. There are building elements such as towers, columns, and battlements on the facade as well, but of course, they are not for protection. The facade of the citadel was planned to be blue, but to make it more striking the color pink was chosen.
The building consists of soft and non-edgy elements like the fading color on the facade to symbolize aging. There are no hard lines on the facade as there are no hard lines in nature; every design element is round and curved. All of the windows, like the columns, are different from each other. Most of the exterior design elements were made from recycled objects.
