Description

The BayWa headquarters in Munich’s Arabellapark, an 18-storey office building erected from 1967-1969 and designed by Toby Schmidbauer, was in need of modernisation to improve energy-efficiency, indoor air climate and fire safety. In addition, the office floors needed reorganising and the technical infrastructure updating to meet modern standards. The modernisation plans included adding three additional floors to the tower, redesigning the foyer and relocating deliveries from the south to the north side so that the staff restaurant and cafeteria can face south and open onto a new, sheltered outdoor terrace and green area that replaces a car park along the promenade to the neighbouring hotel. The architects Hild und K also extended the complex, adding a new five-to-six storey campus building, providing a further 150 car parking spaces and creating mostly covered parking for 240 bicycles.

For the existing structure to bear the load of three new storeys, the façade had to be made lighter. Hild and K replaced the massive exposed concrete facing slabs with a lightweight curtain wall clad with sand-coloured fibre-cement panels. The panels are divided into tall vertical strips that overlap slightly and are placed at a slight angle, creating an alternating surface modulation that recedes inwards over the windows and extends outwards between the windows, where the panel joins are backed by dark, powder-coated metal strips. The resulting interplay of light and shadow, together with the strongly delineated frames around the three-pane windows, lends the façade a sense of three-dimensionality. After the modernisation, the four arms of the cruciform high-rise building have been given different heights. The new, set-back top storeys, like the other “new buildings” are clad with dark bronze powder-coated metal panels. Through the change of material and formal distinction of the parts, the architects have made the old and new legible and succeeded in slimming down the visual mass of the building, despite it being 15 metres higher than before. Two new glazed areas on each floor allow daylight into the previously rather gloomy depths of the building and are used as café lounges and meeting rooms adjoining the elevator lobbies. Hild and K have created 12,500 m² of additional, flexible office space – 7000 m² in the high-rise and 5500 m² in the campus buildings – for a total of 1800 workplaces, 600 more than before the conversion, when there were mainly office cells. In addition, the 17th floor, which original housed the building services, was removed and rebuilt as part of the addition of floors 18 to 20. The top floor is now a conference area providing a panoramic view over Munich, which, when the weather is fine, offers a glimpse of the Alps in the distance.

The entire project was completed within the stipulated time frame of four years thanks to the consistent use of BIM. The architects first recorded and then modelled the existing building in three dimensionally, which provided a common and always up-to-date planning basis for the 30-strong team at the architecture office. This greatly facilitated internal coordination as well as the exchange of information with specialist planners and the separate trades.

Originally published in Bauwelt 25.2017, pp. 30-33, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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