Description

In Hamburg’s Billbrook industrial estate, the speculative office building designed by Bothe Richter Teherani points the way to the future very clearly. A structure-within-a-structure design, implemented here as a building in the form of a massive double ‘X’ under a glass box, its interior brings into being a world that contrasts with the surrounding amorphous urban fabric. There are open spaces for communication – almost Japanese in character – stacked green gardens for relaxing in, with a myriad different views from one floor to the next. The building thereby offers a high-quality working environment and a corporate identity. The basic form of the double “X,” an ingenious layout, allows for six building-height landscaped winter gardens and a central atrium. While the building appears very sculptural from the outside, inside the prerequi­sites for a low-tech energy concept are fulfilled. The office areas are arranged in 72 basic modules of circa 200 m² apiece, each of which is situated next to a winter garden usable throughout the year. The rental units can be used flexibly, as open-plan layouts, closed cell-like offices or in combinations of these. To allow this flexibility the building services are located in the centrally positioned core areas. Special high visibility rooms serving also for promotional purposes (or other functions) are situated at the end of each occupancy unit, in the form of conference areas with floor-to-ceiling glazing facing towards the city.

In spite of the spacious impression, the intelligent ground plan – which requires only two stairways – guarantees a high degree of economic efficiency. A maximum rental area was achieved for the rectangular 30 x 70 metres acoustic and climatic envelope. At the same time, the double ‘X’ motif in combination with the arrangement of the winter gardens enables optimum ventilation of the entire building. Fresh air vents at the bottom of the façade ensure that cool, fresh air streams upwards over the staggered winter gardens, eventually escaping at the roof. In this way, notwithstanding high noise levels, all the offices can be naturally ventilated by means of sliding windows in the inner façade. In winter, the envelope serves as a climate buffer and a suntrap, while in summer, the triangular skylights can be opened completely. The combination of exposed thermal masses – a reinforced concrete precast construction with ribbed floor slabs – and individually controllable solar protection louvres in front of the inner façade, rendered elaborate air-conditioning facilities superfluous. The reduced energy consumption also considerably lowers running costs.

The double ‘X’ building, already a trademark even before it was completed, illustrates the symbolic power of architecture, a crucial marketing factor. However, the artificial world inside with its hanging gardens forming stacked microcosms also responds to the human need for identity and community spirit, leaving the daily grind outside.

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