Hochschule RheinMain

Der Dichterturm zu Straßburg

Within the pluralistic, colourful ensemble of debate rooms in the Salons der Republik – designed by students for sites in Berlin and Frankfurt and exhibited at the German Architecture Museum in 2021 – the students playfully explored the diversity of possibilities for spaces dedicated to debate. The focus was on creating environments for lively, cultivated exchanges of ideas.

In the Poets’ Tower, our aim is to create spaces that give resonance to the considered and polished, the felt and fulfilled, the vulnerable and profoundly human word – in short: poetry. Today, we all speak constantly, yet listen ever less. The considered word is often drowned out by hasty, impulsive remarks, and the beauty of the world’s many linguistic melodies is flattened by fashionable clichés. This is why students from Hochschule RheinMain designed the Poets’ Tower in Strasbourg: a striking tower with 14 atmospherically rich rooms for reading and experiencing poetry, each equipped with a writing desk and a small bar for exchanging words, alongside 14 apartments for poets from around the world, and 14 rooms with contrasting uses to encourage cross-cultural and cross-social communication.

In other words, the tower reimagines Babylonian multilingualism – celebrating it as a wealth to be cherished. Confidently and globally connecting, it situates itself between the European Parliament and the European Court of Human Rights.

Hochschule RheinMain / RheinMain University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Fachbereich Design Informatik Medien (DCSM), Studiengang Innenarchitektur