Description

With simple means, but with high-quality detailing, the architects Bothe Richter Teherani created two long, oval buildings to accommodate the offices and workshops of the Hamburg lighting designers Tobias Grau. The two oval tubes form a striking landmark in the monotonous landscape of utilitarian boxes on the industrial estate and provide an appropriate space for the enterprise.

The spatial programme incorporates a warehouse for prefabricated parts with areas for final assembly, delivery and dispatch as well as offices for administration and development. Open-plan layouts match the team-oriented work style of the company, which, with only sixty employees, is relatively small. Management, administration, sales and product development co-exist unbureaucratically, profiting from their proximity to each other, allowing the direct exchange of thoughts and ideas. The office storey is organised as a typical triple layout subdivided into the following clearly defined zones: a middle section consisting of cubic light wells, sanitary facilities and glazed conference rooms; the corridor zones; and the actual work areas separated from them by pinned raked columns. The conference rooms are therefore accessible to every worker while the light wells increase the amount of daylight at the workplaces. Low meeting tables and presentation tables designed by the property developer articulate the work areas and serve as storage space. The structure, the interior fittings and the furnishings too were executed in wood in order to create a quiet and harmonious spatial effect overall.

Bowed beams of glued-laminated timber, spanning a distance of twenty metres and spaced at five metre intervals, support the smooth exterior skin of aluminium and glass, giving the tubes their form. During the summer months, external glass louvres fitted in such a way as to block the sun’s rays, prevent the interior of the transparent structure from overheating and protect the workplaces from glare. These louvres are made of arched and printed glass with a span of 2.5 metres. On hot summer days, cold water circulates in the under-floor heating circuit providing radiant cooling (see “New Developments in Climate Conditioning”), and contributing to temperature regulation in the naturally ventilated building. The building generates its own energy by virtue of two south-facing solar façades. This energy is fed into the building’s power supply. The photovoltaic solar façades on the south sides of the two tubes are executed as structural glazing façades into which the individual solar modules are fitted. The grid layout of the modules allows daylight to enter. These façades are the building’s distinguishing characteristic; they illustrate the linking of technology with aesthetics and thereby present to the public an important guiding principle inherent in the corporate identity. Inside, these qualities find their logical continuation in the open, non-hierarchically organised office zones.

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Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.