About the project

How can not only the physical heritage, but also the underlying mindset of an architectural visionary be made accessible, communicated and carried into the future? In a joint research project, the saai | Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering at KIT and the Wüstenrot Foundation are investigating these questions.

Conrad Roland, an internationally active architect and engineer, is best known for his innovative rope net constructions, which spread around the world as popular playground equipment. But his legacy goes far beyond the well-known climbing nets: Roland radically challenged conventional architectural concepts with visionary high-rise suspended constructions and experimental spatial rope nets. His sense of order was also original: Roland structured his research work using a specially developed colour code. The uniqueness of this organisational system is to be preserved and at the same time integrated into an existing archive logic. This results in exciting new perspectives on methodological approaches and challenges in the archiving and processing of complex collections.

In 2021, a large part of his estate and research activities from Berlin and Hawaii were brought together at saai. In addition to correspondence, plans, sketches and models as well as photographs and photomontages, the collection also includes a collection of documents on works by other architects, which he compiled as part of a research project on tension-loaded multi-storey buildings. This previously untapped material harbours enormous potential and promises valuable impulses not only for the history of urban planning, architecture and engineering in the second half of the 20th century.

In this blog, we present the project and shed light on Conrad Roland's work, both in terms of its historical significance and with regard to current interdisciplinary discourse. The examination of this multi-layered legacy offers exciting insights into the academic research process and the often invisible work of archives. The blog develops continuously over the course of the project and is not organised chronologically or thematically. However, using a constantly expanding hashtag system, we organise selected finds as objects of knowledge for targeted research and highlight interdisciplinary interfaces. In the course of the project, a digital compendium will be created that makes previously inaccessible archive material accessible.