Competition time: Backnang, Stuttgart City Region IBE 2027

Early sketch concept masterplan

The team have spent a few days working on a competition for a new urban neighbourhood in the city of Banknang near Stuttgart. Chris has been a regular visitor to Stuttgart and the countryside around it; walking, riding and cycling across the wide open agricultural landscape and soft deciduous forests, and felt the team would be able to respond well to the brief - which was to create a neighbourhood for the IBE 2027 exhibition which will mark the 100th anniversary of the Weisenhoff District - designed and planned by Gropius + Corbusier in 1927.

As part of the submission them team imagined the world in 2082:

Interview with Resident of Apartment 344 North Ring Backnang July 14th 2082

“My grandfather, he was called Frank too, worked in the Kaelble factory here, he was a forge master, and toiled in all the heat and dirt for almost 30 years. I have some old photographs of the factory, and of the machines they made for rolling road asphalt. He was a company man, like many from Backnang, but that was in the 1970’s over 100 years ago, by then the town was already 1000 years old, and while Backnangers knew they were resilient, the town survived the Bubonic Plague and Smallpox, no one ever guessed what it might have to endure this century.

After the Libyan fiasco when Kaelble closed the plant in the 1990’s, he and my grandmother stayed here to retire, but my father moved to Sindelfingen when he was young to work on the line at Daimler.

I am retired myself now, of course, but I was in the automotive industry as well, as a designer of interior parts, and witnessed as the whole industry shifted from fossil fuel to E-cars, then to driverless and now to E-Fan cars that can fly.

That was a long time ago, before the Corvid -19 virus of 2020-22 when I was a young man, before the Nantong-H2 pandemic in 2040-42, and before the Collapse in ‘45 when I lost my job, as did millions of others.

I am 84 this year, but I do not live in my old family’s home, that’s long gone, instead I live in “Kaelble Park Rings” built along the River Murr in the early part of this century, a period before things changed so much, as a model for a new way of living, and now my whole family lives here,.

It is a lush landscape in the River valley, of soft meadows, mature trees, formal planned and informal gardens, public and private green spaces. The Rings sit at the start of this “linear park” designed to promenade, to linger and to sit in the sun, or under an umbrella to fish perhaps. 

This part of town was laid out and rebuilt back in 2027, long before the liberal reforms and the European Federation was born, created on a blank canvas left over from a time when Backnang was a busy, but declining town, back when it made things, as indeed it doses now but on such a very different scale. Here we grow things, recycle, upcycle, repair and reuse, from the objects we need to the digital equipment we depend on, and the very buildings in which we live.

I remember my father telling me that the city region ran a design competition for this place during the first wave of the Corvid-19 outbreak, and the winner was a British architect, ironically, like the one who did that famous gallery in Stuttgart.

However, those clever politicians and architects who created this place had great foresight, they prepared for what might happen, and designed for the world we live in now. The architecture was made to be flexible, to be adapted over time, and many of the homes here have been different types or sizes and uses over the last 60 years. They made more than a housing project, instead they seeded a community based on the spirit of the town and with a sense of true “place”.

In response to the Carbon Crisis of the early 21st Century, the whole development is made of Cross Laminate Timber, from the low rise homes in the west, to the 12 storey towers in the east which sit like a sentinels on Eberhardstraße and Aspacher. All the buildings have flexible layouts using easily demountable walls, allowing for apartments and homes to be converted or adapted and added to over time.

Where there is below ground structure on the North and South Rings, we respect the flood risk, and use precast concrete made from recycled demolition waste and designed to leak on purpose, to allow flood water to abate. Some homes down toward the viaduct, and the linear ripple blocks which line the Parkland along the Murr, have open gabion wall basements for storage and many of the houses have similar low impact basements/lower ground floors for personal E-cars, bikes, agri-equipment and some even have their own E-fan cars.

Each of the Kaelble Park Rings, is a standalone self-powering unit, using mini hydro on the channelled River Murr and weir by the footbridge, Solar PV roof tiles on most roofs and wind turbines hung in the viaduct structure which all help to pre-power the multiple Ground Source Heat Pump units which supply all heat, power and lighting to the Passivhaus designed buildings, which of course conserves energy means the whole community is Carbon positive.

One of the big challenges they faced back then was the storage of electricity enabling the Rings to go “off grid” in some circumstances, which was overcome by creating a battery farm at lower ground and basement level in the North Ring, and smaller ones in the other rings. This was clever as when the scheme was first delivered, over 200 cars were parked under the larger rings and more recently the space was used for food storage in the famine in 2063.

We also now filter/process and store water from deep bore holes in subterranean 60000 litre water stores, fed by boreholes, which are plastic and buried under each ring in case of pollution events, though the last 30 years have been much less chaotic than the 40’s and 50’s.

But enough of that, you came to find out what the people who live here think so; my home now is in the North Ring, in the assisted living (senior citizens )apartments up on the third floor, with a great view south across the parkland to the River and the stepping stone bridge.

They built this big one first, and it used to have the school on the ground floor here, now that’s our lounge and residents ward. It is home to the Kaelble Backnang Museum, a cultural venue, cafes and shops, plus the battery farm on the lower floor where they used to park cars, which people all owned at least one of; hard to imagine for my grandchildren!

I spend my days fishing along the Murr or tending the community crops down at the Kaelble West Ring Agri-gardens for sale at the village market or food for one of the social collectives. I love cultivating tomatoes and I am proud of their quality, plus I have some space to grow Peonies too, the blush pink ones are my favourite as they remind me of my wife Claudia who died in the second pandemic wave of 2041.

I walk each day along the promenade through the tree lined park along the River Murr, to the Agri-gardens, or take an e-bike if I am late, we have dozens dotted about and all free of charge. If I must get further afield, I can call a driverless PRT (personal rapid transport) which can take me across town to the Eduard-Breuninger-Straße in less than 6 mins.

My son Mathias lives here too, with his wife Ingrid and their three children, in a three storey town house upriver in one of the the West Rings. Matti lives and works from his home, which is near the Agri-gardens and his desk has a view of the fish farm.

Amazingly he works for a big company in Asia, called Donfeng, who bought Tesat, developing software for their deep space mining vessels, but he has never met his boss!  His major project right now is for the unmanned exploration and mining of Titan, he works on the guidance software systems. He has an office at home and works via remote VR avatar with his team, they can model and meet in a shared space online, so he only travels a few times a year.

It is ironic that he has ended up back here living a town built on the manufacture of heavy equipment, but that his enormous vehicles are made over 7000km away.

It’s all a bit beyond me, but he’s well paid and can afford to support us all, which is just as well as I wasn’t left with much after ‘45, when Matti took us all here to live during the collapse because the rings were designed to become “defensible”, to isolate us from the world, acting as “life rafts” if there was civil unrest or another outbreak lockdown.

It’s been 42 years since Nantong-H2 but we still have onsite epidemiology labs, a mini intensive care unit with remote controlled “meta-human” AI (artificial intelligence) doctors, and UV antibacterial light showers. We also have a local human Doctors surgery, Dentist and wellbeing centre in the Kaelble South Ring, facing the river. This offers Yoga, Pilates and mindfulness classes as well as a gym for the body conscious. I guess we are all super healthy now, we must be to keep our immune systems strong.

There is a general food store there too, and an outdoor market space which allows us to sell produce and buy imports from other areas. The whole of Backnang benefits from the Rings vision as they all use these facilities, the park land, the museum and outdoor cinema, the nursery and school, and of course our restaurants and cafes serving home grown produce.

The Rings are indeed mostly green space and much of it is public. The South Ring opens up to the river edge to allow for a new bridge to the north, the stepping stones as we call them, and one to the west too, the gardens and the south facing river banks are very popular with the town people too, despite the fact that they house both the anaerobic digesters and the repurposed old factory block and chimney where our waste to energy plant it hidden.

Mathi’s kids (8 and 12) walk or cycle to the school in the South Ring each day, the school is mainly for infants, but Lukas the older boy can access his lessons online there in the study centre. He travels to the Gewerblichen school across town on some days, taking the cable car to the station and an e-bike the rest of the way.

Their eldest, Eva, is 20 and she is at University in Stuttgart, so is living away for now, but plans to come back one day to be an architect, we still need them to adapt and add to the Rings and there are new Ring settlements being designed and built along the River Murr to the east along Gartenstraße and beyond the Murrbader toward Steinbach and all across the Stuttgart region.

The town and region is growing again as its pretty setting, healthy and fun lifestyle for families and all ages is very appealing now the cities can be so hard to live in.

It is also easy to get around from here, the super-fast S-Bhan trains to Stuttgart or beyond also connect to the airport for Matti or Ingrid and family to fly away on the E-prop planes which took over from jets after the carbon crisis taxes were brought in.

In the evenings I will sit in the sun with my friends, or my son and his family on the restaurant terrace overlooking the gardens, or on my balcony, in the heart of the Kaelble North Ring, gazing out across the river to the South Ring where there  is a  nursery / infant school, which is also used as an adult learning college in the evenings. I did a pottery class there last year and sometimes go to the cinema in the lower levels or see stage play which might be taking place on Broadway in New York but is projected using Augmented Reality glasses into the theatre.

It’s a good life, and most importantly, living here has brought the whole family together in one place”

As we both turn our gaze to track a delivery drone arriving on the south ring, Frank turns back toward his living space at a sudden sound coming from inside the apartment,

“Grandpa” a young female voice calls from the lobby.

“My Eva, she comes home so rarely!” as a smile grows across his face, as a tall young woman enters the room with two companions.

“Hi Gramps, is it OK if my friends come in to see you…” Eva says as she comes through into the open plan living space, and spots us on the balcony “Oh sorry Gramps, didn’t know you had company…”

“Don’t worry my love. He’s come from a city in Austria, they are looking at the Rings for their expansion” says Frank as he nods to me.

“Funny, my friends are here to look at the place too - they are Architects from England, these Rings are often talked of or written of in their history lectures, Stuttgart has two such famous developments with Weissenhoff by Gropius. A century years apart and radically different, but all about people, isn’t that right guys?”

She smiles at her Grandfather as I make my excuses to leave, I have all I need.

Bold ideas can change society, and purity of concept vision and ambition can create a place like no other, from which each new place will learn.

The 2100 people living here now are part of a historic town, but this neighbourhood is unlike any other I have visited on my travels.

They had a marketing slogan in the brochures back in 2025 - I think it summed it up well:

“Kaelble Park Rings” a vision of the future, for generations to come.