Erfurt – New life is being breathed into the Dornburg estate – Sabine Wosche, Managing Director of LEG, and Prof. Peter Benz, President of the Bauhaus University Weimar, learned about the first project for the redesign of the historic site directly adjacent to the Dornburg Castles on Friday, July 4, 2025. LEG has owned the area, with its diverse, largely derelict buildings, since 2021. Until about a hundred years ago, it served as a royal estate and was later used for research purposes, among other things. The current project to revitalize the estate is the "Dornburg Experimental Farm" project, in which LEG is collaborating with the Bauhaus University Weimar. Students from the Bauhaus University are working on a concept for the use and conversion of the "Great Cowshed" building until July 12, when the project concludes; they have already been carrying out construction and craft work there in recent weeks. They were professionally supervised by the local architecture firm exnovum. Through experimental installations and conversions, a learning and meeting place is to be created in the domain in order to gradually revitalize the area.
“Today we gained insight into the work surrounding the ‘Dornburg Experimental Estate’ cooperation project,” said Sabine Wosche during her visit to the estate. “We at LEG are extremely pleased to have found partners in the Bauhaus University Weimar and its highly motivated and creative students, who are approaching this historic and charmingly situated site with dedication and fresh ideas!” Over the past few weeks, the students have developed and implemented numerous ideas at the experimental site, which is indeed intended to be a place for experimentation and testing, thereby providing impetus for creative new construction – focusing on aspects such as sustainability and multifunctionality, mediating between prototypical construction and traditional craftsmanship, rational approaches and intuitive exploration, pragmatic problem-solving, and an almost poetic discovery of new paths in architecture and spatial design.
“We are delighted to have the opportunity to develop sustainable design strategies for existing buildings together with the students and our cooperation partners LEG and exnovum, and to test them concretely at a 1:1 scale. This allows the students to translate theoretically acquired knowledge into practical experience and to actively address a real need for transformation,” said Tim Simon-Meyer, Junior Professor of Constructive Design and Testing at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the Bauhaus University Weimar.
Specifically, the students focused on the practical implementation of initial alterations and modifications to the building's ground floor, as well as work on the facade. This included adding a canopy, installing new windows made from reclaimed glass, creating an accessible restroom, and laying new water and sewage pipes. The project successfully bridged the gap between university teaching and the realities of construction, allowing students to test strategies for a low-threshold and phased approach to redesigning existing buildings. The results will be presented to the public on-site on July 12th at 2 pm as part of Summaery 2025 (the Bauhaus University Weimar's annual exhibition). The project represents a promising start to the development of the entire site and paves the way for continued collaboration in the coming years.
Annual exhibition »summaery« of the Bauhaus University Weimar:
Exhibition Dornburg Experimental Farm – Experiments on Sustainable Tectonics
Thursday, July 10 to Sunday, July 13, 2025
Main building of the Bauhaus University Weimar, Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 8, 99423 Weimar, Room 110
Saturday, July 12, 2025, 2 PM to 10 PM
Domäne Dornburg, Markt 2, 07774 Dornburg, former cowshed
Experimental celebration: coffee & cake, music and discussions about experimental teaching and collective building in existing structures.
Background:
The Dornburg estate served as a crown estate until 1921; afterwards, it was both a research site of the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena and, during the GDR era, a state-owned farm. The buildings developed gradually along the town wall from the nucleus, the Old Dornburg Castle, until the 1920s to meet the estate's growing storage needs. The row of barns, along with several other residential and farm buildings, is a prominent and highly visible testament to the estate's former activity. With the modernization of research operations, work shifted to new facilities outside the town from the mid-20th century onwards. The last permanent residents left the estate around the year 2000. Today, some buildings of the listed complex are used as warehouses by businesses or as workshops for the municipal works department, while others stand empty.
Even during the GDR era, the estate, then state-owned, was one of Dornburg's most prominent employers. As a result, many personal stories are still connected to the estate today. Most notably, this is true of the large cowshed, which served as a canteen and venue for celebrations and other events from the mid-1980s onward. If its considerable structural potential can be harnessed and brought back to life, it could be a catalyst for the revitalization of the entire area.
Following initial revitalization efforts by Friedrich Schiller University Jena in cooperation with IBA Thüringen, the site has been owned by LEG Thüringensince 2021. Since 2023, LEG Thüringen has been collaborating with the architecture firm exnovum on the development and public relations of the area. Regarding the sub-project "Dornburg Experimental Farm," LEG is developing pathways for a new use of the large cowshed in cooperation with the Chair of Constructive Design and Testing at the Bauhaus University Weimar, with support from exnovum.
Further information about the project can be found at: https://t1p.de/domaene_dornburg_presse
Instagram: @leg_thueringen | @kee_buw | @exnovum
