Description
In 1999, the Semperit Company held a competition calling for a landmark building reflecting the corporate identity. It was to provide space for the research section, which is mainly concerned with the testing of rubber products – above all rubber gloves.
The dynamic two-storey high-tech ”tube” represents the international position and innovative potential of the company. At the gable end facing a federal highway it received an inclined two-storey glazed façade that may cause different associations such as ”a large mouth, car grill, or air-intake” and affords views into the workspaces of the technicians.
The silvery aluminium tube rests on a mainly glazed rectangular base housing laboratories. An atrium with orthogonally arranged rooms around it is located within the tube. The atrium also serves as access zone for the laboratory areas on the ground floor. An open stainless steel stair reminiscent of a gangway leads up to the administration and executive offices and meeting rooms on the first floor.
The construction of the aluminium tube posed a big challenge: the most difficult part was to design an aluminium envelope that would wrap around the curvature of the building as precisely as a car chassis. What is common in the automotive industry still is pioneer work in architecture. Apart from the three-dimensional curvature and the homogeneity of the building skin thermal expansion of the aluminium was crucial.
To construct the aluminium envelope the builders had to resort to smoothing techniques common in shipbuilding. Essentially, the building was constructed like a ship hull turned upside down. Reinforced concrete columns of the glazed ground floor support the upper floor slab, which carries steel ribs consisting of curved box profile segments. This steel structure has infillings made of trapezoid sheet metal; an insulating layer and another layer of trapezoid sheet metal cover the structure.
This outer layer provides drainage and supports the exterior aluminium envelope. The envelope itself consists of 7 cm thick and 6.5 m long extruded aluminium sections that were lengthwise mounted like ship planking. Only in this way was it possible to construct the amorphous form. The tube appears as if tailored out of a single piece.
Drawings
Schematic sketch of building
Ground floor: laboratories
Second floor: offices, meeting rooms
Cross section
Longitudinal section
Axonometric view of the structure
Originally published in: Hardo Braun, Dieter Grömling, Research and Technology Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2005.