Vitra Design Museum, Weil Am Rhein Switzerland

Vitra, the furniture company, have turned to a variety of major architects to design the buildings making up their manufacturing site near Basel, close to the German/Swiss/French border. As well as Frank Gehry, Alvaro Siza, Nicholas Grimshaw, Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid are all represented, in a cross between an industrial plant and a model village.

The design museum houses temporary exhibitions on themes of furniture design, and Gehry's building makes a suitable host for them - in keeping with the theme, but - once inside - supporting, not competing with, the exhibitions.

The geometry of the building does not feel contrived, or particularly noticeable, as you go around the exhibitions. From the outside it does feel both those things, but it is at home among the other architectural showpieces that make up the Vitra site.

Some Windows to the Rhine for Microsoft

Individualism and innovation is what Microsoft promise their users worldwide. The new North Rhine-Westphalia headquarters promises the corporation just that. In summer 2008 the joint project of HOCHTIEF Construction AG and REVISCO GmbH was completed. The Rheinau Art Office excels through its area efficiency and flexible layouts. The construction of the building with its transparent glass façade and two parallel, self-supporting façade ribbons enable the development of an open space concept without any interior walls allowing for an open East-West view from each workplace. This opens up individual possible uses for the main tenant Microsoft. The technical basis is provided by Microsoft products, of course, enabling online telephone calls, video conferences and whiteboards via touch panels. By deploying this the company does not only wish to guarantee in-house communication, but also the one with customers and partners.

The building was planned as an open space and guarantees the enterprise to be able to respond to future developments in a flexible way. The option to install new offices or open conference areas is what makes this building so interesting to Microsoft. For the first time, partner companies of the software giant now have the possibility of supporting customers at the same house. More than 75% of partner inquiries came from companies outside the Cologne economic area. Hence, in the medium term Microsoft calculates with about 500 new jobs at their own and partner companies.
Innovation coupled with sustainability was the idea of Cologne-based Freigeber architectural bureau in cooperation with Stephan Schütt. By making use of geothermics for air-conditioning purposes, the Rheinau Art Office can serve as a role model in terms of cost and energy savings.

Constructor: RheinauArtOffice GmbH & Co. KG
Architect: Freigeber architects and architect Stephan Schütt
Status: Completion: 2008
Size: GFA: 8,743 square meters

Ozeaneum by Behnisch architects

In summer of 2008, the Ozeaneum, designed by Behnisch architects from Stuttgart, was opened as a new tourist attraction on the Northern harbor island of Stralsund. The new building, realized on the basis of a European-wide competition, expands the locations of the Deutsches Meeresmuseum (German maritime museum), founded in 1951, the main building of which is located inside the former Katherinenkirche (church of St Catherine) of Stralsund. Apart from many large fish tanks filled with inhabitants of the sea from all over the world, visitors of the Ozeaneum have the possibility to experience many topic-based exhibitions dealing with the Baltic Sea, the world’s oceans, research and usage of the seas as well as giants of the sea.

Museums as important advertising vehicles

Since Frank O. Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Bilbao at the latest, museums are considered important advertising vehicles and marketing tools cities and regions use to stay competitive. The designers were aware of this and deliberately deployed an emblematic architectural language with demonstratively modern shapes. In a clear contrast with the already existing brick architecture of Stralsund’s old town, being appointed an UNESCO world’s cultural heritage in 2002, they developed an open building composed of free forms reminding of a collage, flooded by visitors and light from all sides like “rocks bathed by the ocean”. Viewed from the water, the bright façades consisting of curved steel sheets look like large swelled sails due to their freely projecting edges, building up as a catchy silhouette in front of the backdrop of Stralsund’s old town.

Sensitive Embedding

In order to adjust the dimensions of the new building to the surrounding buildings, the Ozeaneum is apportioned into four “pebble shaped” buildings of various sizes housing the sections exhibition, fish tanks of the Baltic Sea, fish tanks of the North Sea and Giants of the Sea. Towards the Northeast, the three listed old buildings have been integrated into the design, and a harbor walk has been installed. The museum can be accessed from there.

Once inside, the visitors first reach the open foyer with the adjacent functionalities museum shop, café and rest rooms. Via a 30 meters long, free hanging escalator they then cross the foyer and come past whale skeletons floating freely in mid-air and move up to the exhibitions areas on the upper floor. The large glass façade towards the water allows for a free view reaching as far as the island of Rügen. Once you have reached the top floor, you will plunge into the house’s underwater worlds, subdivided in topics and connected with each other via bridges. The Ozeaneum’s largest tank is a huge schooling fish tank with a curved picture screen, holding nearly 2.6 million liters of water. This is almost 5,000 bath tubs, after all! You can hardly get any more water than that.


Constructor: Deutsches Meeresmuseum Stralsund, Germany
Architect: Behnisch Architekten, Stuttgart, Germany
Status: Completion: 07/2008
Size: GFA: 17,400 square meters

Unilever Building by Behnisch Architekten

At a prominent location of Hamburg HafenCity you can find the new company headquarters of Unilever Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This new building erected right at the beach pier was designed by the Stuttgart-based Behnisch Architects, just like the adjacent Marco Polo Tower. Based on the wish of the Dutch-British corporation for an inviting, brightly lit and communicative office building with a high level of sustainability, the planners developed an asymmetrically tilted, partly eight-storey high new building with a consistently transparent shell. The double façade allows the inside and the outside to flow into each other and connects the building directly with the urban space surrounding it.

As a central element of the interior an atrium as high as the building itself has been integrated, provided with plenty of daylight via the generous glazed areas of the roof construction. The atrium not only houses a public café along with a shop for Unilever products that can also be used by the public, but also features the central opening cores. Little meeting points in the transition areas of the office zones have been created to form a place of encounter and to encourage the exchange of employees among each other. The individual meeting isles are connected with each other horizontally as well as vertically through free supporting bridges.

The new building is not only convincing through its open and inviting architecture, it also excels through its sustainable and ecological building concept. An important role here is the protruding system façade the individual frames of which are covered by transparent plastic foils. The construction which is considerably lighter compared with the double glass façades, enables for an optimal daylight usage along with a minimized cooling output and allows for the windows being opened even with high wind speeds.

The energy balance of the Unilever building is additionally improved by the deployment of sectional ceilings, the usage of energy-efficient LED-lights controlled by daylight as well as through the large green roof above the seventh floor. The walkable roof area guarantees for an improved indoor climate and at the same time serves as an appreciated recreational center for the employees. Through various measures the new building accomplishes a primary energy consumption of below 100 KWh per square meter and year. A respectable balance which is significantly different from other office buildings! That’s why the building was awarded the golden environmental certificate of the HafenCity during the opening ceremony already.

Constructor: Hochtief Project Development
Architect: Behnisch Architekten, Stuttgart, Germany
Status: Opening: September 2009
Size: GFA: 38,000 sqm

Tornesch - medac - office, lab and logistics building by Architekten PSP

With the Park Tornesch Business Park, the company medac has found a strategically advantageous place for its new office, warehouse and logistics building.
MEDAC Gesellschaft für klinische Spezialpräparate mbH was able to more than double their turnover as well as their number of employees during the past eight years. In order to continue this rapid development, the pharmaceutical company was looking for ways to expand spatially. The first idea was to erect a new office, lab and logistics building at the outskirts of Wedel, where the company’s headquarters is located. Since this did not work, medac was forced to look somewhere else and eventually found a place in the hinterland of Hamburg, theTornesch Business Park. Here, the pharmaceutical manufacturer purchased a strategically well-situated, nearly 32.500 m² large premises and assigned Architekten PSP, demonstrating their preference for demanding architecture. This Hamburg-based architectural bureau had already designed an administration building in 2007 and created a solitaire building with strict geometry within the downtown of Wedel.
Rather buttoned down from the Outside

While the headquarters in Wedel is an open and transparent building due to its large window fronts, the office, lab and logistics building in Tornesch, however, presents itself rather buttoned down from the outside. This is due to the fact that windows are rather cumbersome for a warehouse, and daylight might harm goods. The new building’s appeal is its dynamic design. The shape and the vertical window ribbons with slant endings is something that brings a cargo ship to people’s minds, anchoring in Hamburg’s Northwest. The part towards the South is where the crew works, the part towards the North houses the goods.

The structure consists of one underground and five aboveground levels; it’s 20 meters high and houses a representative entrée, the goods reception and issuing department, office rooms as well as research and laboratory rooms. The single-story 14 meters high bilge houses an automatic small parts storage, a high-bay warehouse, a cold storage room and the consignment department inside the ship’s bow towards the North.
Brightly lit and Light-flooded inside 

As close-lipped as the cargo ship appears from the outside: the structure inside is an open one, brightly lit and light-flooded. This part of the building is the business card of the office, lab and logistics building, hence, PSP architects have designed it in a transparent manner and used high-quality materials. Hallways serve as communication centers, glass supports the creative get-together. The three upper floors are grouped around two inner courtyards, lighting the inner part of the building with daylight and serving as a place of relaxation for the medac employees.

Also the consignment department, where shipments are put together manually per individual order, is less close-lipped. Glazed doors and wall breaks, windows arranged towards the North, and large skylights guarantee brightness and transparency.

The compact façade areas of the office, lab and logistics building have been faced with an insulated, rear ventilated metal façade. It shines in the sunlight, the windows mirror clouds and sky – like a ship, having hoisted its anchors and heading for the next turnover growth with full speed ahead. 


Constructor: medac Gesellschaft für klinische Spezialpräparate mbH, Wedel, Germany
Architect: PSP Architekten Ingenieure, Hamburg, Germany
Status: Completion 2010
Size: GFA: 13,200 m² GV: 98,000 m³

Z-UP Office and Residential Building by Architectural bureau Professor Wolfgang Kergaßner

A Z-shape with rounded corners and wide, white window reveals in 70s-style – the “Z-UP” Office and Residential Building.
A Z-shape with rounded corners and wide, white window reveals in 70s-style – those are the striking features of the “Z-UP” office and residential building completed in 2009, adjacent to the “Stuttgart 21” developmental area.

When driving from the B27 via Heilbronner-Straße towards Stuttgart downtown, you will be happy about the view of such an unusual building. Since where the LBBW administration building enters the stage with plenty of glass and pointy corner, the “Z-UP” boldly stands by the hillside, begging to differ. Right next to the former washhouse of the Postdörfle (postal village), renovated by Gerkan Marg and Partner.
The “Z” has been developed through an overlapping of the of the premise layout along with the Principal’s whish for a double. The “Up” stands for the development of the seven-story building with office usage and the separately erected, eight-story high residential building right behind it towards the hilltop. The offices protect the residential part from the noise coming from the busy Heilbronner Straße.

Despite the terrain’s enormous ascension the architects were successful in creating a main entrance to the office building. It cannot be reached via a flat surface, but via a generous, flatly inclined system of stairs and ramps. With a gesture like this you would expect a similar reception when entering the building, maybe a bright atrium or a lobby. Unfortunately, this is not the case, so one might think that the opening space which could not be rented out has fallen victim to “cost optimizations”. 

The offices, however, are large, bright and can be apportioned into up to four units per floor. Nearly two-thirds of the area house the “Das Beste” production headquarters of the Reader’s Digest publishing company. The opening system consisting of three parts allows for office areas to be lit by daylight all day long. Only the opening cores have been built in a massive construction. The office areas have been equipped with a component tempering. Due to the poor air quality ventilation is done mechanically.

Taking a closer look at the façade with the curved screens you will notice that there is a second façade right behind the first one with opening wings in standard dimensions for office buildings. Protected from the wind, sun shades are used for sun protection in the gap. The double façade, constructed as corridors and block façade, meets the high standards of noise and heat protection, the latter during summer.

The office building and the underground carpark stand on drilled piles up to 33 meters deep. Due to an official approval of plans they have been arranged and constructed in a way that three tunnel sections for trains of the suburban railway and the Deutsche Bahn can be pushed through in the future without shaking the building’s foundations.

Constructor: HOCHTIEF Projektentwicklung GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany
Architect: Architectural bureau Professor Wolfgang Kergaßner
Status: Completion: 2009
Size: GFA 18,300 m²

Window's by Günther Schaller and Peter Kyncl

Window’s sets new office building standards in Stuttgart downtown and seeks to get in touch with its versatile surroundings through its façade design.
Once again, one of the unwanted office buildings from the 1970s in Stuttgart downtown had to make way for a new building. In favor of the Window’s business building with shops, catering services and office areas. The plans, evolved from an expert opinion process, were made by the German-Swiss Günther Schaller and Peter Kyncl bureau partnership, in existence since 2006. Before that time, Schaller worked for the Behnisch bureau since 1991, later became a partner.

Playing with Formats within the Context

The name Window‘s says it all and provides insights into the building’s concept: Cubes within white frames, Windows, protrude with plenty of contrast from the glazed, dark façade shell. They deliberately respond to the urban building context, since Window’s touches two very different street spaces. Theodor-Heuss-Straße, appointed a nightlife area despite the busy traffic, communicates with large-area Windows. A deliberate alternative to the rather serial never-ending façades displayed by the neighborhood. 

Smaller elements protrude like jutties towards Calwer Straße, characterized by a rather slower pace due to its pedestrian area. From there, employees can have an eye on the huzzle and buzzle in front of the shops and restaurants. Hence, the first floor of Window’s houses shops. Along the connection line between the two different street spaces, the façade designs are brought together to form a projection of two floors held inside a white frame across a corner. The maximum headroom of the sidewalk below is minimized to nearly 1.5 meters.

One for All

Featuring flexibly usable areas, the office floors group around an inner courtyard. Window’s has been designed as an office building for versatile usage. Since the auditing and consulting firm KPMG, conducting business on an international level, is the tenant on the seven floors, the office landscape has been turned into a vast in-house communication area. The three-story lobby in the atrium area can be accessed via stairs from Theodor-Heuss-Straße. In order to keep the first floor free for shops, it was re-located to the second floor. On the eighth floor, you can access the mandatory roof terrace from two meeting rooms, providing a view across Stuttgart’s downtown. 

Integrated Stock

Parts of the lower floors are remains of the old building, while the areas aboveground have already been demolished in 2007. Via the connection from the side, Kienstraße, the nearly 100 parking spaces in the basement can be accessed. This makes the hitherto access via Calwerstraße obsolete, so the latter can live up to its role as a popular end-to-end pedestrian area.

Constructor: Phoenix Real Estate Development GmbH, Stuttgart/Frankfurt a. M., Germany
Architect: Günther Schaller and Peter Kyncl, Stuttgart, Germany/Zurich, Switzerland
Completion: Autumn 2009
Size: GFA: 17,000 m²

Galerie Stihl by Hartwig N. Schneider Architekten

 

Mediative in terms of Urban Plannin

Right at the heart of Waiblingen in Swabia, between the Weingärtner suburbs with its historical half-timbered houses and the shore of the Rems river, the two gently rounded buildings with their transparent industrial glass facades look somewhat exotic. However, they have pretty much settled in by now. Only separated by an alley, they establish a dialog between the flood plain and the town museum’s historical half-timbered building. And even create new reference lines and special edges. That’s how the idea of free building shapes with a uniform shell evolved, avoiding any kind of building backs and undefined remaining space. And still playing around with narrowness and vastness. Terraces stretch out towards the bank slope, a newly created square opens up towards the town.

The sculpture "Pavillon für Waiblingen" by Olafur Eliasson is now enriched by the force field for art since July 2009, responding in a sensitive manner to its architectural and natural surroundings.

Character Strengths

Although the two buildings for gallery and art school look quite similar, their interior differs to quite a large degree due to their different functions. The architect Hartwig N. Schneider describes them as two solitaires speaking the same language.
The gallery’s forecourt merges seamlessly into the foyer. The large room without any supporting columns is impressive, its façade diffusely filters daylight coming in. Translucent façades allows for the integration of light coming in from the sides, which can also be cut off completely through curtains. Apart from that, skylight sheds oriented towards the North guarantee for an even illumination. The gallery’s shape stands for the introversion and calmness natural for a museum. Mobile wall elements structure the nearly 20 x 30 meters large area and allow for a versatile all around exhibition organization.
The art school, however, is separated into smaller units and open towards the outside and vivid. Here, nearly allworkshops and class rooms are at ground level and grouped around a tow-story opening and core zone. It’s the art school’s communication center and connects the foyer and exhibition area oriented towards the museum square with the roofed maintenance area. Partition walls of glass and room-high sliding walls allow for a variably connecting the rooms with each other.
The connecting part is the deliberately mediated workshop atmosphere through materials such as concrete for walls and ceilings along with the magnesite screed floor. Everything is supposed to look solid and simple.

Something Delicious after Art

In August 2009, the gallery café disegno (Ital.: drawing) was added, providing room for nearly 100 guests as well as an extra room, all inside a vertically slated new building which can be opened on the first floor. Actually the museum’s catering was supposed to take place inside the historical Häckermühle on the area. However, this turned out to be rotten and had to make way for the building also designed by Hartwig N. Schneider, erected upon the layout of the old mill. It’s shape establishes a reference between the knocked down old building and the historical old town.


Constructor: Town of Waiblingen, Germany
Architect: Hartwig N. Schneider Architekten, Stuttgart, Germany
Completion: May 2008
Size: Exhibition area: 500 m²

Neues Museum by David Chipperfield Architects

Rarely has the re-construction of a cultural building been praised so concordantly like the careful renewal of the Neues Museum on the Museumsinsel (museum island) in Berlin. The numerous awards read like the list of Oscar awards. Apart from the BDA award Berlin, the Great Nike 2010, the main award of the architectural prize of the Bund Deutscher Architekten BDA (Association of German Architects), plus the Nike perfection in detail, the Detail Prize 2011 as well as the DAM architectural award 2010, there were also international acknowledgements, e.g. the 2010 Edition of the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/ Europa Nostra Awards, AIA UK 2010 Excellence in Design Awards, RIBA Awards 2010 as well as the RIBA Crown Estate Conservation Award and, just recently, the renowned “Preis der Europäischen Union für zeitgenössische Architektur” (Award of the European Union for contemporary Architecture), the Mies-van-der-Rohe-Award.

Restoring the Neues Museum

With such a blaze of glory it’s hard to find your own words, since everything has already been said really. So let’s try a quote from David Chipperfield to begin with: “This is not about scars, but about remembrance and history. It’s like with a painting: If it’s unfinished and you complete it, it’s not original any longer.”

After being a sleeping beauty for 60 years, a planning period of eleven years, six years of construction time, several building freezes and financing problems, the Neues Museum in Berlin is no monument of high-gloss restored architecture, but a vivid place. A complex that doesn’t promise any mumbo-jumbo, but radiates authenticity and history. In which, on the one hand, the original structure has been preserved balancing on the fine line between restoration and reconstruction, including the various damages caused by time and destruction. And, on the other hand, a closed special impression has been preserved with the architecture pulling back to allow the precious exhibits to fill the stage.

The Museum’s special Charm

Already back then the building by the Schinkel student Friedrich August Stühler was path-breaking. From a museological point of view, granting citizens thirsting for education a holistic approach into foreign worlds through its universal character, and from a constructional point of view the use of industrially ready-made building materials. Best possible harmony with the items to be exhibited, Stühler’s dream, still works today. Even as the exhibits are just as battered from the long decay as the building itself. But this is exactly what makes this place so charming. The rest is something everybody has to discover for himself.


Constructor: Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian cultural heritage trust), represented by the Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung (Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning)
Architect: David Chipperfield Architects Ltd
Restorations: Julian Harrap Architects, Pro Denkmal
Status:Construction time: 1997 - 2009
Size: GFA: 20,500 sqm