Wir leben ökonomisch und ökologisch
über unsere Verhältnisse. Wir müssen aufpassen,
dass uns die Probleme nicht über den Kopf wachsen.
Wir brauchen mehr Menschen, die
intelligente Lösungsbeiträge entwickeln.

Günter Faltin

Arbeitsfelder

Innovation und Zukunftsthemen

Intelligente Lösungsansätze können sich nur durchsetzen und zur Wertschöpfung beitragen, wenn sie verstanden werden – am richtigen Ort und zum richtigen Zeitpunkt.

Die Arbeit der MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION ist darauf ausgerichtet, Wissen und Innovationen sowie visionäres Denken sichtbar zu machen und eine Plattform für den interdisziplinären Austausch zu bieten.

Dafür ehren wir Unternehmen und Einzelpersonen, die einen herausragenden Beitrag für Nachhaltigkeit und Innovation mit gesamtgesellschaftlicher Relevanz leisten.

INNOVATION BUILDING AWARD


Excellence Winner 2019
AT INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY SUMMIT

FRANKFURT SCHOOL OF FINANCE & MANAGEMENT

by
Henning Larsen Architects

The prize for the INNOVATION BUILDING AWARD 2019 at INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY SUMMIT 2019 goes to Henning Larsen Architects for their FRANKFURT SCHOOL OF FINANCE & MANAGEMENT.

With the Innovation Building Award 2019 we focus on innovative architectures for knowledge, education, learning and design. These architectures should equally promote community and knowledge society as well as sustainability in the 21st century. They stand for concept design quality, innovation, aesthetics, utility & usability, flexibility and semantics, functionality and usability, ecological quality, symbolic and emotional content, technical quality and function.

The project FRANKFURT SCHOOL OF FINANCE & MANAGEMENT by Henning Larsen Architects combines exactly these qualities in one: education, city integrity, design affinity.

 

  1. The draft of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management supports the exchange of knowledge and a free, open dialogue. The campus is designed as a small-scale city. The publicly accessible in The "Zeil des Wissens", which runs through the entire building, is fundamental to this design. Here students, teachers and visitors of the Frankfurt economic scene can meet and exchange ideas. The focus is on dialogue and exchange and the variety of different classrooms that also encourage learning outside the classroom. These set new standards in terms of traditional hierarchical learning environments.

  2. The open lawns created a significant public space that connects the Frankfurt School with its surroundings.

  3. With other cultural and educational buildings along the Alleenring, the new university building forms an education clasp, the ensemble of the so-called campus mile.

  4. The International Business School forms an innovative community, a learning environment in close relation to the city of Frankfurt, one of the leading economic centers in Europe. Transparency, cohesion and community are guiding principles of the building.

  5. The Frankfurt School of Finance & Management achieves high and sometimes above-average results for energy efficiency and optimal use of daylight through the technical building concept.

Laudatio by Oliver Jahn

Oliver Jahn, Laudator

It was the year 31 before Christ when Marc Anton, the Roman general wanted to impress Cleopatra, the queen of Alexandria, who he was in love with. So he went to the city of Pergamon to loot 200.000 books from their Library just for one reason: to present them as a gift to cleopatra and the famous library of Alexandria. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing good about looting. But I always found it kind of fascinating to present a whole library to your love interest. Not a car. Not a necklace. A library. Maybe this is where the idea of content is king (or queen) once started.

Of course it’s way too early to formulate a consistent quintessence of library architecture of the 21st century.

Pessimistic thinking has it that it’s just a question of time the book will stop to be the leading medium, with the library as a species to die out like a rare bird.
Almost half a century ago when the computer started conquering our world, people began conjuring up the end of the Gutenberg galaxy. We heard that every day. Now with all of us touching the glas surface of a small device all day long that prediction seem to be proven right.
Well, get yourself a ticket to the Frankfurt book fair in two weeks. A festival of empty shelves? I don’t think so. 7500 exhibitors from more than 100 countries will actually put hundreds of thousands novelties on display. The market in Germany is more than 9 billion euros. Does that sound like a dead medium?
And of course today we learnt a good deal about how many fascinating library or integrated multi functional spaces come to live currently all over the world. The concepts are getting more and more sophisticated, resonating to the real demands of local communities.

As we can see - and i not only as a design journalist, but as well as a bibliomane and obsessive  reader could happily add on dozens of other current library projects to be found all over the place - so as we can see there seems yet to be an even growing demand for creating venues of education, cultural exchange, of dialogue and learning that build up on the rich culture and history of human mankind.

We cannot solve the tremendously complex problems of our time by only reading books, no doubt. To me there´s nothing nostalgic about emphasising the magic of a beautiful library like the Pierpont Morgan, the Trinity college or Max Dudlers Grimm Centre in Berlin - no, quite the opposite. I personally believe in libraries, old or new, as vibrant institutions that are able to connect the dots between the past and the future. We have to revitalise and to translate again and again for every generation all the knowledge of the past. The world is full of distraction, so to my personal view we need places where we can really focus, wether in silent concentration or in vibrant exchange. And i think all of us in the room are on the same page.

As you all know Venice has been the epicentre of the history of the printed book, with 200 printing shops popping up fast from the 1460s after Johann Gutenberg started juggling with the moveable type. Aldus Manutius from Venice became one of the most famous printers of his time, inventor of the pocket book and the italic typefaces, his Aldines to become the most beautiful and saught after collectibles until nowadays.

The Award certificate 2019

Or think today of the Venice time machine project that brings alive dusty archives with a multi-discipline research project. It gathers humanist scientists from all disciplines and tech people to connect the dots between the past and the future, digitalising millions of documents of Venice’s vibrant merchant heritage to a holistic 4-dimensional model that you can walk through to watch and learn. And it all comes from old parchment files collected through centuries. It’s all about creating new access to knowledge.

Museums now a good deal about that as well, think of how Film director Wes Anderson went through the basements of the KHM Vienna for a groundbreaking show that was a kiss of life for all the hidden depots.

What we learnt today with great insights is that libraries as cultural and educational spaces are changing more and more from storage spaces of the written word into venues for vibrant exchange between people. And we learnt it’s not only about the wow effect of the Building but as well about the wow of what’s happening inside. Which means interiors as well as smart pedagogy.

The Innovation Building Award 2019 at this first International Library Summit goes to Henning Larsen Architects from Copenhagen. With their concept for the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management they invented a Campus that sets new standards of transparent and open learning in the world of finance. With a bold vision Henning Larsen Architects creates their school as an open and transparent community centered around a public inner space - the Street of Knowledge. To me the project is connecting in a very contemporary and energetic way to an old and beautiful concept, echoing the ancient days of Athens where the people gathered at the agora, the public plaza at the city´s centre, to talk politics, to discuss and decide all public affairs.

The Frankfurt School of Finance & Management is a great example of how exchange and dialogue could be orchestrated in the most encouraging way, with highly flexible spaces that vary from intimate reading areas to different classroom, conversation and resting areas.

We need more of those mindspaces which means architecture that stimulates people to take their bits from the past not only to absorb but to transform it to most surprising concepts of our future society. A society that is willing and able to use all the knowledge of human mankind that is to be found in those living monuments around the globe that we call libraries.

To me there is nothing more uplifting, enlightening and nothing more substantial facing the complex challenges (or problems !) of our world than strolling around a Forrest of shelves, randomly grabbing a calf skin bound volume, flipping the crispy pages and suddenly starting to read.

Maybe one afternoon you enter that library to learn about the mechanisms of cum ex deals or the traps of the recent changes of european law. If you end up reading how Shakespeare´s First Folio came alive in 1623 or why Marcel Proust´s bedroom walls were all covered in cork, then you are on track.

Allow yourself getting distracted in such space and you will find the unexpected, may it a book that brings you to new thinking, or may it be the person of your life. We learnt today again that what has used to be the most powerful cultural technique of mankind will be again the most fast forward one for the 21st century. We call it reading.

Oliver Jahn
AD Architectural Digest Germany
Editor in Chief

1st International Library Summit · Venice, 4.10. 2019

Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Carlo Scarpa Garden

CELEBRATION CEREMONY


The award ceremony will take place on October 4, 2019 as part of the evening reception.

Opening Adress
Ines Miersch-Süß, MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION

TALKFUTURE INNOVATION DESIGN FOR KNOWLEDGE, EDUCATION, INFORMATION
Claudia Lux im Gespräch mit Oliver Jahn, Vincent Kersten, Dante Bonuccelli

AWARD ELECTION – REASONS
Ines Miersch-Süß, MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION

AWARD GIVING – LAUDATIO
Oliver Jahn, AD Architectural Digest

AWARD ACCEPTANCE SPEECH – INNOVATION BUILDING MEANS
Werner Frosch Henning Larsen Architects

AWARD CONGRATULATIONS
Jette Hopp, Claudia Lux, Dante Bonuccelli, Oliver Jahn, Marco Muscogiuri, Ines Miersch-Süß.

EXCELLENCE WINNER AWARD 2019
EXCELLENCE WINNER AWARD 2019
EXCELLENCE WINNER AWARD 2019

Impressionen der Preisverleihung am 4.10.2019

Venedig, Fondazione Querini Stampalia

Werner Frosch, Henning Larsen Architects – Excellence Winner 2019
Oliver Jahn, AD Architectural Digest – Laudatio 2019
Ines Miersch-Süß, MSAO FUTURE FOUNDATION – INNOVATION BUILDING AWARD 2019