Hochschule RheinMain

Der Dichterturm zu Straßburg

In the pluralistic and colorful ensemble of debate spaces of the Salons der Republik, which students designed for locations in Berlin and Frankfurt and which were exhibited in 2021 at the German Architecture Museum, they playfully explored the wide variety of possible debate spaces. The focus was on spaces for lively and cultivated exchange of arguments.

In the Poet’s Tower, we are concerned with spaces that give resonance to the thoughtful and refined, the felt and deeply experienced, the vulnerable and profoundly human word – in short: to poetry. For today we speak far too much and listen far too little. And thoughtful speech is being buried under premature, impulsive outbursts. At the same time, the beauty of the world’s many linguistic melodies is being obscured by fashionable buzzwords.

For this reason, students of the Hochschule RheinMain designed the “Poet’s Tower of Strasbourg,” a striking tower with 14 atmospherically dense rooms for reading and experiencing poetry, each also equipped with a work table for writing and a bar for exchanging words. It includes 14 residential units for poet-in-residence scholars from around the world, as well as 14 rooms with contrasting uses designed to stimulate cross-social communication.

In other words: the tower construction in Strasbourg re-embodies the Babylonian diversity of languages in a new way – and celebrates it as a richness. Confidently and as a connector of worlds, it positions itself between the European Parliament and the European Court of Human Rights.