Description

According to urban planning requirements the two new buildings occupy the northern end of the emerging Adlershof campus. The two upper floors of both buildings are recessed to reduce their cubature. The full four-storey height of the volumes refers to the adjacent buildings.

The brief called for an unobtrusive urban layout that was also to reflect and strengthen the identity of the individual units of the institutes. These apparently contradictory requirements could adequately be met with a comb shaped plan. The institute building provides facilities of equal standard for all faculties; each facility has its own address but sustains internal circulation and direct access to commonly used practical study rooms and workshops. Since all institutes are organized around a square and have mechanical services, communication and circulation paths arranged on this side, large internal circulation areas are avoided. Instead, the outdoor space provides the connecting tissue.

The majority of rooms are to be used as laboratories, which are serviced via individual service shafts. Only a few spaces located at the inner corners facing south contain offices that do not require shafts. On the fourth floor – above the corridors and core zone – mechanical services are located exclusively.

Both buildings are solid structures with load-bearing walls and service shafts made of semi-prefabricated reinforced concrete elements. The double-skin exterior wall consists of load-bearing reinforced concrete, core insulation, and a textured reddish exterior cladding made of prefabricated elements.

The architecture lacks any sculptural quality; instead, generously glazed façade areas hint at the layout behind, making the functional and technical building structure readable: the individual circulation areas of the faculties, the lecture hall, and the technical infrastructure, exemplified by service shafts that can be recognised by recessed façade areas.

---

Originally published in: Hardo Braun, Dieter Grömling, Research and Technology Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2005.