The Project: DESY CAMPUS - Sustainable Urban Development Vision

Type: Master Degree Research and Design Project

Project Supervisor: Prof. Martin Wollensak

Teamwork: Osama E. Siam, Javi Quiros and Abdelrahman A. Yasser

Date: October, 2015

(The Source: DESY Framework plan for urban development)

The German Electronic Synchrotron, or DESY, is one of the world’s foremost technological institutes in the development and production of and research into accelerator units and synchrotron emission sources. 
The facility is located on approximately 55 hectare along the Luruper Hauptstraße in Hamburg-Bahrenfeld, and has since its foundation 50 years ago been characterized by continuous change and technological progress.  Buildings and equipment from the earliest days are to be found next to the most modern high technology machines, which enable research opportunities that are unique in the world.  A characteristic feature of DESY is the overlapping use of various research facilities and functional areas.
The DESY campus consists of a complex network of subterranean and overland supply structures, which are necessary to the operation of the accelerator unit.

Up until this point in time, DESY has had the capacity to utilize the space available for each new research project.  But over the last few years DESY has reached the limits of what it can do and it has also reached the existing physical barriers to planning permission.  The question of how to further physically develop has now arisen. The Directorate of DESY has decided to develop its own spatial plan for the future, to be able to present a coherent, sustainable, and suitably flexible basis for further expansions.  The planning goals are on the one hand the clarification of spatial developmental possibilities and potential, and on the other hand to identify themes and areas in which a medium term need for action exists.
In the medium term, not only the further development of research capacity and taking on new projects but also sustainability and the design aspects of the parts of the facility used by more than one project will have to be more intensively integrated into daily management.

The available town planning measures are to be used as an extension of the master plan developed between 2010-2012, and serve as a basis to ensure that the continuously growing spatial demands of DESY can be met in the necessary quality. On the basis of this expansion and keeping in mind future developments, there are several aspects that need to be considered during the growth process. Building-specific analyses such as the age of the structures, use and condition, but also spatial analyses of features such as open space, transport, and planning regulations are essential. The preservation of existing features and future research can in the final analysis only be assured through linking all the planning-relevant levels.  As a first step, this spatial plan indicates the need for new territory and in this connection the problems that may develop.

The analysis serves as an extension to the spatial plan for planned and possible projects during the next research period. The positive development of DESY over time has shown that the demand for such research facilities is continuously increasing. This trend makes planning future research, administrative and storage areas imperative. As these areas cannot be provided on the DESY property alone, an expansion onto neighbouring sites must be made possible. The particular difficulty in the connection and extension of particle accelerators is that the new land necessary to such projects needs to be incorporated according the geometrical demands of the accelerator.

The fact that the University is considering building other extensions on the Bahrenfeld campus is an important factor in the future planning of DESY. Such developments will require space that DESY in its turn will have to compensate for elsewhere. However, there will also be synergies between the research activities at DESY and the University, but these cooperative areas must also be planned for. The new planning and completion of work and the constant demand for research space require an extension to the existing plans .In the following text new information will be analysed and converted into spatial action plan recommendations.