For Jan Oertling, this is the second award he has won for his master’s thesis “Messbergkontor”. It was not until December 2021 that he received an award from the Possehl Foundation in Lübeck. For his master’s thesis, Oertling planned a building in the middle of Willy-Brandt-Strasse in Hamburg’s Kontorhaus district. Opposite the Chilehaus, surrounded by UNESCO World Heritage, with a direct view of the Speicherstadt. Oertling prevailed against a total of 59 works and won one of the three advancement awards for urban architecture. the jury reasoned her verdict like this:
With a high degree of creative will and a deep level of detail, the author developed an office building in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hamburg (…) The work convinces with a consistently high level of craftsmanship.
“It was a great experience to be able to take part in a Germany-wide competition with renowned chairs and thus to draw more attention to building in existing buildings and the regional building culture – topics that will have a strong influence on the sustainability of the built environment in the future,” says Jan Oertling on the award. According to the architect, this would not have been possible without his professor Michael Locher.
Oertling’s supervising professor Michael Locher on the performance of his student from the Master’s degree in architecture: “We are very pleased about Jan Oertling’s award, because his thesis proves that relevant contributions at the interface between architecture and urban planning are also being made at smaller German universities, which ultimately also answer current questions about sustainability and at the same time the world heritage -Respect context.”