Nadine Althaus, a graduate of the master’s program “Communication in Space,” has been awarded the Gutenberg Scholarship from the City of Mainz, worth 4,000 euros, for her outstanding thesis, “Kita am Gartenfeldplatz.” In her master’s thesis—which received a grade of “very good” for its concept, design, and presentation—she explored the repurposing and design of two vacant buildings in the vicinity of Mainz’s Gartenfeldplatz. The result is a compelling program for parents of preschool-aged children, in which seniors can also actively participate as caregivers.
“While researching for my master’s thesis, I realized that I was seeing more and more young families in Mainz. This observation was confirmed when I looked into the current birth rates. Every child has the right to a daycare spot starting at age 1, but Mainz currently has a shortage of 2,000 daycare spots,” said the award winner. In the “Meeting Place for Young and Old” conceived by Nadine Althaus, seniors are therefore to be integrated into the daily routine of the daycare center to help address the current staff shortage in Mainz.
“We see Nadine Althaus’s outstanding achievement, on the one hand, in a very thorough analysis of the possibilities arising from the location and structure of the two existing buildings and their interconnection. Based on this, Ms. Althaus has presented a design proposal for the interior and exterior spaces that is pleasantly pragmatic and highly appropriate from a design perspective, and which manages to surprise in key aspects,” explains Prof. Wolf Gutjahr, the thesis advisor. His colleague Prof. Lutz Büsing, who served as the second advisor, adds: “This thesis demonstrates that, through a clearly defined needs analysis, viable solutions can be derived for socially motivated challenges in Mainz’s neighborhood development. The proposed repurposing of two existing buildings leads to a significantly higher quality of space and communication in Mainz’s Neustadt district.”
At a ceremony held at City Hall on June 22 at the Gutenberg Museum, a total of five graduates from Johannes Gutenberg University and Mainz University of Applied Sciences were honored. The City of Mainz’s Gutenberg Scholarship has been awarded since 1946 for particularly deserving theses that relate to the city of Mainz and Gutenberg’s legacy.
