New Architekten and Jutta Albus Build a Greenhouse-Glazed Climate Pavilion from Beetle-Damaged Timber in Schwerte

Most public buildings promise the same interior on every day of the year. The House of the Seasons, also known as the Climate Pavilion Schwerte, does not. Designed by New Architekten (lead architects Fritz Keuthen and Michael Weichler) with Jutta Albus Architektur for the City of Schwerte, the 235 m² pavilion anchors the new Climate Garden being prepared for the IGA Metropole Ruhr 2027. In summer it is a shaded place for teaching. In winter it becomes a market hall and a room for celebrations. The building changes its role with the calendar rather than fighting it.

What interests us is how far the architects push that premise. The pavilion uses as few technical systems as it can, it borrows its glazing logic from greenhouse construction, and it is clad in local timber damaged by bark beetles. These three choices fit together into one argument: a civic building can be simple, cheap to run and honest about its materials, and still be a good room. The project aligns with Germany's "Building Type E" initiative for simpler construction, and it reads as a working test of what that policy could produce.

A Pavilion in a Working Landscape

The site is not a manicured exhibition lawn. Coneflowers and raised planters sit in the foreground, and a high-voltage pylon rises directly behind the building. The architects do nothing to hide it. We think that is the right call: a climate garden in the Ruhr should acknowledge the energy infrastructure around it, and the pylon frames the pavilion's own modest solar array as part of the same conversation.

Förder Landschaftsarchitekten's planting carries right up to the building edge, and a small glass greenhouse next to the long hall makes the family resemblance obvious. The pavilion is effectively the greenhouse's larger, civic sibling: the same type, scaled up for people instead of seedlings.

Greenhouse Logic on the Glazed Long Sides

The glass facade is based on standard greenhouse construction, and you can see the economy of that decision in the tight grid of tall panes and the thin sloping metal roof edge. Horticultural glazing systems are mass-produced, light and quick to install. Using them for a public building is a quiet provocation against bespoke curtain walls that cost far more and do little more.

The roof carries photovoltaic panels run by a cooperative, and a small wind turbine and a wind vane stand nearby. None of this is hidden behind parapets. The building's energy story is visible from the path, which suits a structure meant for environmental education.

Turning Beetle-Damaged Wood into Cladding

Bark-beetle infestation has turned large parts of German spruce forest into salvage timber, often sold at a discount or left to degrade. Here that wood becomes the facade. Vertical boards run in two bands above a concrete plinth, with a narrower board profile at the base where splash and wear are highest. It is a simple, practical way to give a timber skin a sacrificial zone.

All timber and metal is left untreated. The boards will grey and the metal will dull, and the architects accept that openly. A polished metal panel at the base of the front elevation will read very differently in five years, and that change is part of the design rather than a maintenance failure.

The Notched Gable and the Covered Porch

The end walls are where the pavilion gets its character. The gable is notched into a V-shaped profile, breaking what could have been a generic barn silhouette, and a glazed strip at ground level lets the timber mass appear to float on light. Against a young birch in autumn colour, it looks domestic in scale despite its public program.

The covered porch, with exposed rafters, fibreboard soffit and wooden doors, is the most useful space in summer: shaded, open and tied to the garden. It is also the clearest demonstration of the low-tech brief, since a deep roof overhang does the job that a mechanical cooling system would do elsewhere.

An Interior That Shows Its Workings

Inside, the timber trusses, wood-wool ceiling panels and cable trays are all exposed. The prefabricated timber frame and cassette elements for walls and roof are legible as built, without linings added to tidy them up. The wood-wool panels add acoustic damping to a hall that would otherwise be all glass and hard timber, which matters for a room used for meetings and markets.

Large sliding doors open the hall to the lawn, and grey curtains hung from the timber columns offer a soft, adjustable layer against glare and heat gain. It is a modest tool, but it fits the project's logic: users adjust the room themselves instead of handing comfort over to a control system.

Plans and Drawings

The plan is close to a diagram of the program: one long hall with three tables, a compact service block, and a slatted deck along one side. Concentrating services in a single block keeps the hall free for markets, workshops and events. The elevations confirm the two personalities of the building, with fully glazed long facades and clad end bays under the V-shaped and pitched rooflines.

A cistern collects rainwater for toilet flushing and plant irrigation, closing a small water loop between roof and garden. It does not show in the drawings, but it completes the plan's quiet efficiency.

Why This Project Matters

The House of the Seasons is a small building with a large question attached: how much technology does a public building actually need? Its answer is very little, provided that you accept a room which feels different in July than in January. Sufficiency, resilience and simplicity are easy words to put in a brief. This pavilion turns them into specific decisions about glazing, timber, services and use.

The material choice may be the most transferable lesson. Forest damage from bark beetles will keep producing timber that the market undervalues, and this project shows it can become respectable civic architecture. If Building Type E is going to change German construction, it will need proofs like this one: cheap, buildable and good enough that people want to use them in every season.

House of the Seasons (Climate Pavilion Schwerte) by New Architekten and Jutta Albus Architektur, with landscape architecture by Förder Landschaftsarchitekten. Location: Schwerte, Germany. Area: 235 m². Year: 2023 to 2025. Photography: Thilo Rohländer.

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