Description

The IKMZ (Information Communication and Media Center) of the Brandenburgische Technische Universität (Brandenburg Technical University) in Cottbus was designed by Herzog & de Meuron as a tall, abstract solitaire positioned in the center of a wide, unobstructed and sparsely landscaped site, visually mediating between the inner city of Cottbus and the campus.

Insulated by multi-lane streets, the center connects the two poles by a pedestrian passageway cut right through the building’s otherwise unbroken envelope. Wrapped entirely in a shroud made of glass, superimposed with white raster images of intertwined and meandering language fragments, the building appears, in daylight, as a scale-less and nearly opaque monolith. Only at night, when the interior illumination penetrates the translucent double-skin glass facade and renders the inner skeleton consisting of cores, columns and slabs visible, does the building undergo a transformation from abstractness to comprehensible reality.

The meandering ground figure is achieved by connecting alternating convex and concave circle segments to a continuous curve. Projected up over seven floors, a non-directional object is created that permanently fluctuates in volume, and vanishes and engulfs depending on the viewing angle, point of focus and the intensity of reflections. Paired with the sun’s path, the change in weather and the course of seasons provoke the glass skin to cycle through endless color modifications from a modulated frosty white to a dark green, then followed by a warm glow at night, giving the building a remarkable sculptural quality. The iconographical strength of the structure is heightened by the fact that the IKMZ is seemingly situated on top of a gently sloped mound, a cost-cutting measure to avoid expansive excavation for the two lower, subterranean floors, housing closed stacks and multi-media presentation rooms.

The main entry vestibule, as part of the passageway, offers access into a light-flooded, multi-chromatic circulation and information space dominated by three elements – a free-floating monumental spiral staircase cast of concrete, the concrete columns organized in a nearly orthogonal grid, and the custom-designed helix-shaped chandeliers. Electric green, magenta, yellow and a dark blue are reserved for all collection and reference locations, areas of service and information, as well as circulation and infrastructural elements. Clearly distinguished from the psychedelic and exuberant display of color are the tranquility-demanding reading rooms and study areas, which are predominantly rendered in white and gray. It is in these locations where the white, cryptic patterns dissolved in pixels and printed on the exterior glass cloak, achieve a decoupling of the interior space by abstracting the built environment beyond.

Two circular concrete service cores, contributing to the lateral stability of the structure, generate the only visible acute angles inside the library by tangentially touching the inner glass envelope, thus interrupting the flow of motion while at the same time redirecting it. To a varying extent, following the orthogonal structural grid, slabs are cut back from the envelope in patterns alternating from floor to floor, creating intercommunicating floors, double-height spaces for assembly, collaboration or reading. Complex views are offered from galleries into glass-enclosed voids or back into the building’s exposed skeleton.

The IKMZ combines library and multimedia functions to a modern e-learning center; through the integration of a high-capacity glass fibre infrastructure, connecting the university’s operational data processing center with the individual network nodes, the future of information flow appears secured.

The new logotype of the institution, as well as the pictograms identifying five areas of focus – environmental studies, energy, material sciences, architecture and information & communication technology – are derived from the undulating shape of the library. Besides the iconographic waveform, the building’s interior color concept, a means of orientation and a wayfinding system in itself, is replicated in the graphic design concept and layout of the university’s printed material.

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Originally published in: Nolan Lushington, Wolfgang Rudorf, Liliane Wong, Libraries: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2016.