Construction at Blauer Salon
The cinema is being rebuilt. In 2017, the order went out to the building construction office, and now, about 5 years later, something is happening. We are happy! The control room is being enlarged, new projection windows, new ventilation, new sound system. The building construction office is working hard and we can only wait and see when it can go on again.
In 2018, our honorary Hiwi, Jason Stewart, successor of the Hiwi legend Tilmann Rödiger, had already submitted an "application for change of use of premises" (Regie Blauer Salon, room 012, ground floor, HfG Karlsruhe). The then newly appointed chancellor of the HfG, Christiane Linsel, eagerly signed the application and then it went on to the structural engineering office. A year later, when asked again how to proceed, the mischievous answer was that unfortunately they didn't really know, it had somehow petered out and a new application would be good.
After the second application was written, generously approved by the HfG management and forwarded to the building construction office, we heard nothing more for 3 years and were astonished when in April 2022 the announcement came from the HfG building manager Igor Hardt that everything had to be removed from the premises immediately and the hall closed for business. Preferably the day before yesterday - the construction workers are now moving in soon. There was no time to lament, the planned seminars were canceled, students and faculty were put off with the hope of a speedy reconstruction and pointed out the phenomenal advantages in the time after.
Oh yes, that's right, I almost forgot: the advantages - or rather the reasons for the conversion, or rather the application for conversion: the control room of the Blauer Salon, the cinema hall of the Hochschule für Gestaltung, had been equipped with an interpreter's booth in the original planning. This was then, of course, not really needed with digitization and quickly degenerated into a storage room. Projection windows in impossible places and poor infrastructure for the cinema projectors, which became a major problem since the founding of the cinema project in 2017, gave rise to the desire for a large control room, with a wide panoramic window, anti-reflective glass, proper sound insulation, exhaust air, cable passages into the hall, etc.
Well, anyway, after everything was cleared out in April 2022 and the hall was bare and lay fallow, nothing happened until October 2022. When the suspicion arose in mid-May that work would probably not begin immediately as announced, we secretly moved back in with a portable projector and 16mm, always fearing that the walls would be torn down the next morning. So it was freshly set up for each performance and then taken down again. That was so stupid that it was funny again.
Well then, in October 2022, 4 years after the first application, and after almost 6 months of official closure of the hall, we came by the Blauer Salon one beautiful autumn day and the workmen had demolished the entire control room as if it were no big deal, who knows, maybe it was not. And from then on it went reeeeeeelatively fast, in January 2022 the roughest part was done and we could start to install the technology. In the course of this, the floor was redone, the old movie theater chairs and curtains were made a little nicer, and a new lighting concept was installed. Guys, I'm telling you, it was an experience. Gladly again, dear HfG and dear structural engineering office. Many thanks to all the trades that were involved.
