First site visit to HCU’s pilot for circular planning and construction – the historic former Karstadt building in Hamburg-Harburg
On Wednesday, April 16, an initial inspection of the vacant building took place. HCU, together with Landesbetrieb Immobilienmanagement und Grundvermögen (LIG), Behörde für Stadtentwicklung und Wohnen (BSW) and Sprinkenhof GmbH met on site to collectively assess the potential of the former department store. With its more than 100-year history as a place of commerce and social interaction, the building is an integral part of Harburg's cultural identity – once an independent city, now a district with significant development potential.
The historic Karstadt building will undergo comprehensive renovation starting in 2025 and is planned to be creatively revitalized through a phase of interim use until 2032. Initial considerations range from a museum to a daycare center or special education school, to socially responsible housing development. A feasibility study has already been initiated.
As part of CircleBIM, HCU will use the building as a pilot project to research innovative applications of Building Information Management (BIM) in circular planning and construction processes. The goal is to assess how BIM can specifically contribute to optimizing circularity in the North Sea region’s public construction sector – particularly through material reuse, resource conservation, and transparent processes.
As a next step, HCU will begin a digital assessment of the existing structure, including 3D scans, material inventory, and BIM modeling to determine the possibilities and establish precise parameters for the pilot project. Subsequently, processes for model-based information management of the public building stock will be developed to test their possible use as a material pool. To this end, it is planned to include the perspectives of stakeholders of the region in form of workshops.
