Creating beacons for building, living
and working in the future
An International Building Exhibition (IBA) in the Stuttgart region has the potential to become an international showcase for architecture, engineering and building culture from Baden-Württemberg. If we succeed in exploring and implementing solution approaches – sometimes even in a bold and provocative way – for urban planning in the Stuttgart region in terms of affordable housing, mobility, sustainability and combining living, working and leisure, then we will also have found answers to problems that pose a challenge for all large urban conurbations around the world.
The Stuttgart region will become a model for urban areas of an industrial character. Solutions and products implemented here can be exported to other urban regions. An international building exhibition might well even prompt substantial investment in the Stuttgart region. Take the IBA Emscher Park international building exhibition in which five billion DM was invested, for instance.
The Stuttgart region is one of Germany’s most successful industrial centres, yet fundamental dynamic changes in the economy and society are in the offing which the region needs to address. Many may recall images of once prosperous North American motor cities that failed to keep up with change. Stuttgart region is far from being in that position, but no-one can guarantee, and nor does it go without saying that it will still occupy a pole economic position in ten or twenty years’ time. Stuttgart region risks becoming a victim of its own success: growth-driven pressure and a shortage of affordable housing, demographic change and immigration, structural change in industry, climate change and landscape protection, changes in mobility, new requirements of urban greenbelts, free public spaces and recovering public space. These are challenges and tasks that in many cases can only be achieved through the solidarity of regional stakeholders.
“The IBA will show us new housing forms: densified, with a high quality of open spaces; housing that is close to workplaces and transport. And of course, a regional IBA is also about inter-communal spatial planning.”
Thomas S. Bopp,
Chairman, Verband Region Stuttgart
This is why new forms of intercommunity and regional cooperation must be developed. Unlike the IBA Emscher Park, the planned IBA 2027 StadtRegion Stuttgart will not focus on problems like shrinkage or de-industrialisation, but on the ground-breaking re- and further development of a prosperous industrial culture. On one hand, this is subject to global competitive pressure and on the other, must take into account the needs of the people who live here now and in the future, and also environmental and climate protection requirements. The core principle of an IBA in Stuttgart region is therefore “preventive structure change”.