The Institute for Grey Energy is a non-profit organization. Since 2021 we commit ourselves to a new evaluation of existing buildings. Our aim is to prevent the demolition of existing buildings. Instead, we want to find a new perspective for them. In order to do so, we engage from a scientific, architectonic and practical perspective with existing buildings.
We support people who are interested to initiate their own projects. We advise regarding strategic and communicative processes and funding opportunities, just as much as helping to connect committed citizens, planners and decision-makers. We engage on-site. We start the conversation and create visibility.
An important basis for our actions is a profound research of further dimensions of Grey Energy, looking beyond the energetic value. The bound energy is to be understood as part of our environment, which creates numerous interdependencies between the built and the grown. Here, we encounter the question whether cyclical regeneration and processes of appropriation only seem to be contradictory?
We understand Grey Energy (embodied energy) as a resource, which is closely related to culture. Hence, its use requires a critical analysis of the conditions during its formation and its historical contexts. This is not the only setting in which we question the narrow ideas and imaginations of the urban and rural space.
Crucial findings are brought together with knowledge that is already to be found in the Archive of the Institute. Furthermore, it will be discussed with interested parties and will be made available for public. Other topics such as the culture of repair, sustainable building, urban mining or already existing concepts of transformation of existing buildings add on to the repertoire of the Institute and give a new impetus. The mostly urban strategies will not be copied, but will be radically developed in order to integrate the Institute regionally.
The spacial focus of our work concentrates on the landscapes produced by deindustrialization and structural change. In those industrial heritage landscapes countless building complexes of a particular size are to be found. Many of those former industrial sites lie now fallow. But, we recognize their spacial generosity as a key potential and point of departure.
Especially buildings which served for industrial production show due to their demanding building process and the difficulty to transform them a quite high potential of unused grey energy. We understand this energy as a significant resource to succeed in decreasing the emission of greenhouse gases. Furthermore, we want to initiate a radical change on site on how grey energy has been dealt with previously.
Here, we focus on strategies to preserve, remodel and reuse these structures. Until now, preservation and transformation of such buildings are mostly linked to costly interventions with a high energetic expense. Due to this comprehensive remodeling approach, a reuse often seems impossible. By low-threshold concepts of appropriation an alternative to both – the comprehensive remodeling and the demolition – is formulated.
Grey energy is usually not being referred to as renewable, which is why the Institute of Grey Energy develops new sustainable approaches for circular reuse and approaches on how to save this energy. A certain degree of renewability can be achieved through adaptive concepts for different types of uses. This energy is considered to be a common good. A new use and appreciation must not reproduce economical imbalances, but should rather contribute to a fair distribution of common goods.
Therefore, we leave behind the urban centers, test strategies in our real-life laboratories and share the knowledge gained through the atelier with other places in Central Germany. And, in a best-case scenario even with other European regions. Here, the former granary in Oßmannstedt (Thuringia) is pivotal point, home and the first project of the Institute at the same time. We are considering the granary as a sophisticated cultural and ecological heritage due to its history regrading construction and use. Therefore, it provides the focal point of our topics.
