Markus Puidak

• "RESOURCE PROTECTION ACT" The Hidden Potential of Reinforced Concrete Structure
• Tutor: Raul Kalvo, Martin Melioranski, Eik Hermann

The master’s thesis began with the analysis of the lifecycle of the buildings which are rapidly losing their novelty. Buildings that manage to remain upright, but do not look the freshest and most modern – buildings in which the owner sees a valuable plot and a potentially higher cash flow development. The fate of such buildings is often just demolition and replacement.

Demolition is not only the loss of a historic building, but also the destruction of human input, material resources and most importantly, the construction of a new building from the ground up. Doing so requires enormous amounts of material resources. Demolition provides a great opportunity to do that, but taking into account global environmental problems, I have assumed that there is no valid reason to choose the easier path. Material resources should come first instead of the “cash flow”

In the context of this given problem, free will and money have great power. Currently, the owner of a 20-year old shopping center can demolish it, whereas they can not do so with an historic wooden house from the 1920s. It’s not possible to implement all the spectacular construction ideas in a heritage-protected building – removal of any historical element