SHOWROOM GLAS TRÖSCH
'Metamorphosis: monolithic, transparent, crystalline'
On a small commercial site in the west of the city, the former 'Schwabenglas' factory with an office building in front has been located since the 1960s. After the takeover by Glaströsch Holding AG, the Kempten site was strengthened as a so-called 'Competence Center for Southern Germany'. The upper floors of the administration building were demolished in favor of an elongated two-story new building to provide the necessary exhibition space.
This is a reinforced concrete bridge construction spanning approx. 36 m, in which the upper floor rests on two lateral abutments (each with toilets and stairs) as a kind of storey-high box girder. This creates the desired flexible open-plan space on the ground floor for displaying the company's own glass products. The maximum opening to the street side is contrasted by the introverted office wing above. Two top-lit green courtyards with hanging plants structure the administrative offices and punch through to the first floor, creating complex spatial interlocking and differentiated daylighting. The entire concrete core is enveloped by a sliding insulating glass curtain suspended from above, which allows the innovative character of the company to be felt on the outside.
The use of glass as an interior and exterior material is contrasted with solid, mountainous concrete vessels as the building's atmospheric support. Only the symbiosis of the two materials used, stone in poured, cast and polished form and glass, illustrates the ambivalence of glass: the reversal principles of soft and hard, light and dark, transparent and opaque, light and heavy, material and immaterial, depending on the incidence of light.
While during the day the outer glass skin is in the foreground and absorbs the play of light at different times of day and in different weather conditions, at night a kind of metamorphosis practically takes place: the glass skin disappears almost completely due to the artificial illumination and reveals the statically daring inner solid core, which now takes on a crystalline appearance and extroverts the freely spanning showroom to the outside for the viewer.
TOPIC:
Competence Center Southern Germany of Glas Trösch
LOCATION:
Kempten, DE
YEAR:
2008
CLIENT:
Glas Trösch Holding AG
TYPOLOGY:
Industrial | Architecture
STATUS:
Completed
TEAM:
Michael Becker, Franz Schröck, Bernhard Kast
PLANNING TEAM:
Böller Bischof PartGmbB, Lindenberg
IB Stöffel, Kempten
PHOTOGRAPHER:
Nikolaus Gruenwald, Gerlingen
WORKS
No.155 | 2023.
School for Timber and Design Garmisch-Partenkirchen
No.132 | 2016
Development Plan Mindelheim Tractor Museum
No.119 | 2014
Development Plan of Hospital Kempten
No.111 | 2013.
Transformation Of The Haindl Paper Factory Site Waltenhofen
No.102 | 2012
IFEN Walmendinger Horn Cable Car Station
CONTACT
STUDIO KEMPTEN
Keselstraße 14
87435 Kempten. Allgäu
P.: +49.831.745 8998.0
F.: +49.831.745 8998.9
General: kontakt@becker-architekten.net
Career | Press: info@beckerarchitects.eu
SOCIAL MEDIA
LEGAL
BECKER ARCHITECTS PLANNERS BDA ©2024