In the east of Jena between Löbdergraben and the river Saale an urban tissue has developed, that consists of fragmentary urban blocks, large open residual spaces, main roads and a railway embankment, which completely separates the city from its river. City and river exist in a state of complete disconnection.

This project proposes to reconfigure the preexisting elements through a new urban form: the meander. New buildings are added to existing buildings so that large linear urban blocks form. The blocks contain all the necessary programs: residential, tertiary, leisure activities as well as parking. The blocks continuously change direction, they fold on themselves. This change of direction transforms everything around it by creating an inside and an outside, large interior courtyard like spaces on one side and at the same time the exterior space of the street on the opposite side.

Each meander starts inside the urban tissue of Jena but ends along the river. The urban functions inside these linear buildings are placed by following some simple pragmatic rules, housing and tertiary programs towards the city and service as well as parking in sections, where the linear buildings encounter the railway track.

Selected segments of the embankment have been substituted by an elevated railway on stilts, or on arches. The terrain around the resulting passages is raised in certain areas, in others it is lowered. Through these openings and along this new topography, the open spaces created by the meandering urban blocks connect to the space along the river and a new relation between the urban space of Jena and the natural system of the river is established.