Description

Jowat in Detmold has been producing glues and other adhesives for a wide variety of applications – and in particular for the furniture industry – for a hundred years. The new “Haus der Technik” on a plot of land across the road from its production facilities is the company’s first wooden building. It contains a varied mix of functions: a 200-person auditorium for company training courses and events as well as for hire; an exhibition on the company’s history; workshops, machine rooms and laboratories for testing the durability of adhesives and developing new products, along with various office spaces and technical facilities. All in all, some 5000 m² of gross floor space.

Jowat commissioned Züblin Timber, a timber construction subsidiary of the construction company Züblin, as general contractor to build the building, and they in turn commissioned IfuH Architekten with Roedig Schop Architekten and CKRS Architekten from Berlin to undertake the design and execution. The architects organised the programme of spaces – stacked arrangements of single-storey rooms on the one hand and double-height halls on the other – under a single, flat sheltering roof supported by glulam trusses. The most striking feature of the building, however, is the several dozen differently slanted timbers that surround the building on its three glazed sides, rising from the concrete base to the underside of the roof. They give the building an instantly recognisable appearance that is distinct enough for it to holds its own in its disparate surroundings.

Originally published in Bauwelt 10.2020, pp. 30-33, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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