HYBRID FLAX PAVILION
Landesgartenschau Wangen im Allgäu, 2024, Germany

The Hybrid Flax Pavilion constitutes a central exhibition building on the grounds of the Landesgartenschau, located on the winding banks of the recently revitalised Argen River. The pavilion showcases a novel wood-natural-fibre hybrid construction system developed by the Cluster of Excellence »Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture« (IntCDC) at the University of Stuttgart, as an alternative to conventional building methods. The unique hybrid system combines thin cross-laminated timber with robotically wound flax fibre bodies to create a novel, resource-efficient building structure made from regional, bio-based materials with a distinct local connection. Flax was historically processed in the local textile industry, whose old spinning mill was renovated as part of the Landesgartenschau. The pavilion’s gently undulating roof, together with its circular floor plan and centrally located climate garden, creates an exhibition space that seamlessly integrates into the surrounding landscape. The geothermally activatable floor slab made of recycled concrete provides year-round comfortable use of the permanent building.

For a detailed description and more images please view:

https://www.icd.uni-stuttgart.de/projects/hybrid-flax-pavilion/

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PROJECT PARTNERS

Cluster of Excellence IntCDC – Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture, University of Stuttgart

ICD Institute for Computational Design and Construction

Prof. Achim Menges, Rebeca Duque Estrada, Monika Göbel, Harrison Hildebrandt, Fabian Kannenberg, Christoph Schlopschnat, Christoph Zechmeister

ITKE Institute for Building Structures and Structural Design
Prof. Dr. Jan Knippers, Tzu-Ying Chen, Gregor Neubauer, Marta Gil Pérez, Valentin Wagner

with support of: Daniel Bozo, Minghui Chen, Peter Ehvert, Alan Eskildsen, Alice Fleury, Sebastian Hügle, Niki Kentroti, Timo König, Laura Marsillo, Pascal Mindermann, Ivana Trifunovic, Weiqi Xie

Landesgartenschau Wangen im Allgäu 2024
Karl-Eugen Ebertshäuser, Hubert Meßmer

Stadt Wangen im Allgäu

HA-CO Carbon GmbH
Siegbert Pachner, Dr. Oliver Fischer, Danny Hummel

STERK abbundzentrum GmbH
Klaus Sterk, Franz Zodel, Simon Sterk

FoWaTec GmbH
Sebastian Forster

Biedenkapp Stahlbau GmbH
Stefan Weidle, Markus Reischmann, Frank Jahr

Harald Klein Erdbewegungen GmbH

PROJECT COLLABORATIONS

Scientific Collaboration:
IntCDC Large Scale Construction Laboratory
Sebastian Esser, Sven Hänzka, Hendrik Köhler, Sergej Klassen

Further Consulting Engineers:

Belzner Holmes und Partner Light-Design
Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Hollubarsch, Victoria Coval

BiB Concept
Dipl.-Ing. Mathias Langhoff

Collins+Knieps Vermessungsingenieure
Frank Collins, Edgar Knieps

Moräne GmbH – Geotechnik Bohrtechnik
Luis Ulrich M.Sc.

Spektrum Bauphysik & Bauökologie
Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Markus Götzelmann

wbm Beratende Ingenieure
Dipl.-Ing. Dietmar Weber, Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Daniel Boneberg

lohrer.hochrein Landschaftsarchitekten DBLA

Building Approval:

Landesstelle für Bautechnik
Dr. Stefan Brendler, Dipl.-Ing. Steffen Schneider

Proof Engineer
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans Joachim Blaß, Dr.-Ing. Marcus Flaig

Versuchsanstalt für Stahl, Holz und Steine, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Ummenhofer, Dipl.-Ing. Jörg Schmied

MPA Materials Testing Institute, University of Stuttgart
Melissa Lücking M.Sc., Dipl.-Ing (FH) Frank Waibel

Construction Collaboration
ARGE- Leistungsbereich Wärmeversorgungs- und Mittelspannanlagen
Franz Miller OHG
Stauber + Steib GmbH

PROJECT SUPPORT:

DFG German Research Foundation

Ministerium für Ernährung, Ländlichen Raum und Verbraucherschutz Baden-Württemberg

Bioökonomie Baden-Württemberg: Forschung- und Entwicklung (FuE) Förderprogramm »Nachhaltige Bioökonomie als Innovationsmotor für den Ländlichen Raum«

Holz Innovativ Programm (HIP), Ministerium für Ernährung, Ländlichen Raum und Verbraucherschutz Baden-Württemberg

IFB Institute of Aircraft Design, University of Stuttgart

ISW Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units, University of Stuttgart

KUNSTFORUM INGELHEIM
Conversion, refurbishment and extension of a listed building ensemble

The Kunstforum Ingelheim was built in 1861 as the town hall of Nieder-Ingelheim. It has been used for exhibitions since the 1950s. It has become nationally known through the International Days of Ingelheim – art exhibitions that are firmly anchored in the cultural landscape of Rhineland-Palatinate and are organised every year with the support of Boehringer Ingelheim.

Together with the market square and fountain, the former infant school and a late Baroque residential building, the Old Town Hall forms a listed ensemble on Francois-Lachenal-Platz, close to the Imperial Palace.

As part of the necessary refurbishment, a new foyer and an additional exhibition space under the courtyard were added to the ensemble. The new underground exhibition space complements and enlarges the Kunstforum to a total of five exhibition rooms.

The new entrance to the Kunstforum is via the inner courtyard into the new foyer with ticket sales and museum shop. The listed pavilion adjoining the foyer was converted into a café with a catering kitchen and seating in the inner courtyard.

In order to provide barrier-free access to all levels, the existing staircase was redesigned and a lift was installed.

The exhibition rooms were given a neutral interior design, particularly suitable for temporary exhibitions. A flexible arrangement of darkening elements enables both daylight exhibitions and the complete panelling of the window openings as a hanging surface.

A particular challenge was to create a ventilation and air conditioning system that meets the high requirements of international lenders, despite the limited space available.

STADTTHEATER ASCHAFFENBURG
Conversion, restoration and extension of a listed theatre building.

The Aschaffenburg Municipal Theatre was founded in a three-gabled Renaissance building during the reign of Grand Duke Carl Theodor von Dalberg. The building never had its own representative theatre façade. The architect has also remained unknown to this day. All that is known is that the building was opened in 1811. The theatre experienced an eventful history with many conversions and changes of use. In 1944, it was badly damaged in an air raid. However, it was put back into operation as a temporary theatre in 1947.

The area around the theatre had changed considerably as a result of the destruction caused by the war. In place of the dense old town development, an open area had emerged that was used as a car park for many years. In addition, the new town hall building introduced a new urban scale to the old town centre. The construction of an underground car park finally freed up the car park for new uses.

In 2000, the city council decided to carry out a complete refurbishment of the theatre instead of the individual measures that had become necessary time and again. At the same time, the theatre square was to be redesigned. The decision was made in favour of an expert opinion process with the participation of the citizens.

In 2001, we were commissioned with the planning together with the Wolfgang Lautenschläger office. The first construction phase was a two-storey city loggia that closed off the theatre square towards the town hall. It also included access to the underground car park and a small ice cream parlour. The theatre square was built in the next construction phase. It was surfaced with light grey granite and a large horizontal sundial. A small watercourse divides the square into a sunny and a shady area. The square offers a pleasant and consumption-free outdoor space. In our eyes, it is the ‘living room’ of the Dalberg quarter.

The third construction phase concerns the theatre itself. In addition to the basic refurbishment, a second foyer was added to the upper floor and rooms were added for the new theatre restaurant.

The façade facing the square, which had been missing since the destruction of the war, was completed and topped off with a wide projecting canopy that corresponds with the roof of the city loggia.

With its façade dating from different periods (Renaissance, Classicism, reconstruction, present day), the municipal theatre makes the eventful history of the theatre itself visible. The theatre was reopened in 2011 to celebrate its 200th anniversary.

ELYTRA FILAMENT PAVILION
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The Elytra Filament Pavilion celebrates a truly integrative approach to design and engineering. As a centrepiece of the V&A’s Engineering Season it demonstrates how architectural design can unfold from a synergy of structural engineering, environmental engineering and production engineering, resulting in unique spatial and aesthetic qualities. It showcases the profound impact of emerging technologies on our conceptualisation of design, engineering and making, by intensifying the visitors architectural experience of the museum’s central garden. But instead of being merely a static display, the pavilion constitutes a dynamic space and an evolving structure. The cellular canopy grows from an onsite fabrication nucleus, and it does so in response to patterns of inhabitation of the garden over time, driven by real time sensing data. The pavilion’s capacity to be locally produced, to expand and to contract over time provides a vision of future inner city green areas with responsive semi-outdoor spaces that enable a broader spectrum of public activities, and thus extend the use of the scarce resource of public urban ground.

For a detailed description and more images please view:

https://www.icd.uni-stuttgart.de/projects/elytra-filament-pavilion/

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DESIGN, ENGINEERING AND FABRICATION TEAM

Achim Menges with Moritz Dörstelmann
ICD–Institute for Computational Design, University of Stuttgart
Achim Menges Architect, Frankfurt
Team also includes: Marshall Prado (fabrication development), Aikaterini Papadimitriou, Niccolo Dambrosio, Roberto Naboni, with support by Dylan Wood, Daniel Reist

Jan Knippers
ITKE–Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design, University of Stuttgart
Knippers Helbig Advanced Engineering, Stuttgart, New York
Team also includes: Valentin Koslowski & James Solly (structure development), Thiemo Fildhuth (structural sensors)

Thomas Auer
Transsolar Climate Engineering, Stuttgart
Building Technology and Climate Responsive Design, TU München
Team also includes: Elmira Reisi, Boris Plotnikov

With the support of:
Michael Preisack, Christian Arias, Pedro Giachini, Andre Kauffman, Thu Nguyen, Nikolaos Xenos, Giulio Brugnaro, Alberto Lago, Yuliya Baranovskaya, Belen Torres, IFB University of Stuttgart (Prof. P. Middendorf)

Commission:
Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2016

FUNDING

Victoria & Albert Museum, London
University of Stuttgart

Getty Lab

Kuka Roboter GmbH + Kuka Robotics UK Ltd
SGL Carbon SE
Hexion
Covestro AG
FBGS International NV
Arnold AG
PFEIFER Seil- und Hebetechnik GmbH
Stahlbau Wendeler GmbH + Co. KG
Lange+Ritter GmbH
STILL GmbH

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC

The competition proposal for the New Czech National Library in Prague, a collaborative project of OCEAN NORTH and Scheffler + Partner, seeks to provide both a singular monolithic appearance for one of the key buildings of Czech culture, as well as a continuous and gradient spatial experience of the building and adjacent landscape of the site. The overall building volume is structured to be at the same time contained and open, confined and continuous, providing differentiated spatial experiences for visitors and employees alike. The scheme is understood as one of several landscaped sites that together form a network of adjacent events, differentiated spatial provisions and scenic spots.

The distinctive tectonic articulation of the cantilevering volumes is developed through generative computational processes driven by spatial and structural criteria. In an analytic procedure the stress distribution within the envelope of a specified volume is evaluated and mapped as a vector field of principal forces. According to this structural information, combined with other parameters such as for instance the angle of incident of sunlight, view axes and spatial characteristics, a network of merging branches is derived. The resulting changing opacity and permeability of the building envelope that ranges from the opaque and solid national archive to the gradient density of the cantilevered envelopes‘ structural skin and the open access to public landscape provides a wide range of spatial and microclimatic situation that facilitate and enable both, the high level of organisational control required for a library building and the heterogeneous conditions enabling zones of migrating activities and intensified individual experience of inhabiting space and enjoying the various media and the social dynamic of the library.

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PROJECT TEAM

OCEAN NORTH and Scheffler + Partner

Project Coordination: Michael Hensel and Achim Menges
Project Team: Andrea Di Stefano, Aleksandra Jaeschke, Steinar Killi, Eva Scheffler, Birger Sevaldson, Defne Sunguroğlu, Guillem Barraut, Mattia Gambardella, Pavel Hladik, Gabriel Sanchiz

Engineering Consultants: Bollinger & Grohmann Consulting Engeneers
Landscape Consultant: Thom Roelly

VISITOR CENTRE HERCULES MONUMENT

The competition design for a visitor centre for the Hercules monument in Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, Germany, which is on the list of prospective world heritage sites, is situated at the 515m high peak of a major baroque sight axis of between Kassel Wilhelmshöhe Palace, a 250m long water cascade and the 71m tall Hercules monument designed by Francesco Guerniero in 1717. Due to the complex historical situation the proposal for the visitor centre suggests an infolding of the park to articulate an interior landscape submerged underground that intensifies the transition from the natural surrounding of Habichtswald to the baroque park and monument. Thus, rather than relating the competition brief to specific spatial entities that aim at directly answering the programmatic and volumetric requirements the project‘s spatial strategy is based on providing an interior environment made up of different micro-milieus. These offer a range of luminous conditions, surface articulations and views along each visitor‘s path to the Hercules monument through strategic penetrations of the exterior park by which the structure is covered. Thus the western approach to Wilhelmshöhe passing through the visitor centre is articulated as a series of terrains that allow each visitor to choose individual itineraries and sojourns as a personal response to daily and seasonal changes of light intensities, different vistas, programmatic provisions and duration of visit.

Bürgerhaus Herborn

New community center in Herborn-Burg

Competition, Honorary Mention

Humboldt Labor

Interior Design of Humboldt Laboratory

Humboldt Laboratory, Berlin

The Humboldt Laboratory creates a novel space for exhibiting and reflecting research and science. It constitutes the architectural context for the public exposure, sensual experience and critical discourse of new knowledge. In doing so, it embodies the key characteristics of an »open university« and its ambition to enable multifaceted interfaces between science and society, between knowledge and experience, between object and subject.

The design strives to engender a correlation between the production of space and the production of knowledge. This reciprocity is not cast in a predetermined architectural expression. But it is explored through an open-ended and ongoing spatial transformation of the lab, which in itself constitutes an active investigation of the multilayered capacity of design to materialize and generate knowledge.

This explorative character requires an approach that profoundly differs from the common »top down« approaches to exhibition design. Instead, the focus here is on the development of an enabling methodology to study the interrelation between the production of knowledge and space. The typical architectural approach of deriving the design elements and ordering systems from a guiding design idea is inverted. First, an adaptive algorithm and related fabrication process has been developed that generates different element morphologies, which enable the creation of diverse system morphologies, resulting in multifaceted spatial morphologies. This has been studied for two basic element types: polygon elements and elastica elements.

Project Coordination: Achim Menges

Project Team: Samim Mehdizadeh, Eva Menges

BÖRSENVEREIN DES DEUTSCHEN BUCHHANDEL
Conversion and extension of three listed buildings

Competition, 1st prize

The new home of the Börsenverein is located in Frankfurt’s city centre between Braubachstraße and Berliner Straße. It consists of three listed old buildings that are now part of the city’s familiar image. These three buildings and a new building house the entire Börsenverein group: the Börsenverein itself, the Gesellschaft für Ausstellungen und Messen and the Marketing- und Vertriebsgesellschaft (MVB) as well as other Börsenverein institutions.

They will be carefully adapted to their new use through refurbishment, remodelling, two extensions inside the block and connecting bridges.

Despite their different appearances, the two buildings in Braubachstrasse date back to 1926 and are part of the first major redevelopment of the old city centre, which was carried out at the beginning of the 20th century. In contrast, the house in Berliner Strasse was only completed in 1956. It symbolises the return of white modernism after the Second World War and pays homage to Le Corbusier’s ‘Pavillon Suisse’ in Paris.

Zeichnen auf DIN A4, BraubachFive

Exhibition of selected hand drawings by Ernst Ulrich Scheffler

EXHIBITION ‘MENSCH! SCULPTUR’
as part of the International Days Ingelheim, Kunstforum Ingelheim

To mark the completion of our refurbished and extended art forum, the sculpture exhibition ‘Mensch! Sculpture’ was opened as part of the Ingelheim International Days.

The exhibition architecture and the composition of the individual sculptures were created in close collaboration with the curator Dr Ulrich Luckhardt.

The exhibition ‘Mensch! Sculpture’ shows works by 12 important sculptors who deal with the theme of the human body. The 61 exhibits made of marble, bronze or terracotta are by the artists Alexander Archipenko, Max Beckmann, Rudolf Belling, Edgar Degas, Alberto Giacometti, Georg Kolbe, Henri Laurens, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Aristide Maillol, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso and Auguste Rodin.

Liebieghaus, Museum Alter Plastik

Conversion, restoration and extension of a listed building ensemble.

Noldehaus in Seebüll

Competitive multiple comission. Finalist.

Museumsvorplatz

Design for a new entrance situation for the Museum of Wiesbaden.

Museum Huelsmann, Kunstgewerbesammlung der Stadt Bielefeld

Conversion, restoration and extension of a listed villa

Haus Giersch, Museum regionaler Kunst

Conversion and restoration of a listed villa

Ausstellung Museum für Kommunikation

Exhibition of wartime letters

Weilburg-Orangerie

Café and concert hall in the orangery of the palace garden of Weilburg

Theaterlabor

Theatre Laboratory for the Institute of Applied Dramatics

The entry for the invited competition for a new Theatre Laboratory for the Institute of Applied Dramatics at the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen utilizes the concept of an evolutionary platform to derive the design. This evolutionary platform gives the new laboratory its identity and connects it with the surrounding urban fabric. It also embodies the increasingly ambivalent character of contemporary drama: its spatial articulation enables open ended configurations of stages, spatial acoustics, video projections and installations that can evolve with the laboratory’s work. It motivates to transgress traditional boundaries between interior and exteriors, stage and spectator space.  The resulting building generates a flexible, spatial structure for experimental drama and for new dialogues between art and sciences, between academy and the public.

Heimatmuseum

Conversion and restoration of a listed half-timbered house

Staatspark Hanau Wilhelmsbad

Conversion and restoration of a listed historic resort of 1777

Vinothek Kloster Eberbach

Vinothek in the listed former wine press house of the monastery

INSTITUTE FOR CITY HISTORY IN THE FORMER CARMELITE MONASTERY
Conversion and renovation of the listed monastery complex

The former Carmelite monastery in Frankfurt am Main was founded in the 13th century and extended as a late Gothic monastery complex in the 15th century. Large parts of the monastery building were destroyed during the Second World War. After reconstruction and restoration in the 1950s, the monastery is now home to the Institute of City History.

The Institute for City History, formerly the ‘City Archive’, is divided into several buildings with up to four storeys, in which a reference library with reading room, exhibition/seminar and lecture rooms are housed alongside the administrative rooms. The cloister, refectory and parlatorium now serve as event venues.

The overall refurbishment covers the façades and interiors as well as the outdoor facilities. The event rooms were brought up to the latest technical standards in terms of lighting, acoustics and burglar resistance and equipped with contemporary furnishings.

The former Carmelite monastery is a listed building. The murals by Jörg Ratgeb in the cloister and refectory are among the most important pre-baroque murals in Germany.