Project Category: Competitions (not realized)

The new building is placed close to the street in order to form a tension-filled configuration with the adjacent neighboring building and to leave as much space as possible for future expansion, in addition. As a result, the building is developed upwardly instead of downwardly. The initial, simple primary form of the volume is heightened to a complex figure through the addition of various volumes. The entrance hall, the canteen, the conference room as well as the tentacle-like footbridge are placed about the primary form.

The parcel that remains free to the south is the connecting link to the adjacent small-scale development with single-family houses. The area is to be divided into pattern-like green areas and surfaced areas. Poured, large-sized, concrete slabs with expansion joints form the paving for the outdoor terrace, the driveway and the parking spaces. The green areas are further subdivided either into elongated fields that are planted with trees whose dense foliage acts like a hedge, into areas whose fruit trees imply a grove, or into smaller areas of grass. They invite the employees to spend their lunch break outside during the warmer months and harvest the fruit of the trees.

The project not only includes conventional offices for administrative work, but also spaces for working with fabrics and clothing, reminding one of ateliers with respect to the room height and lighting conditions. The four-story reception space represents the spatial connecting element between the offices and the textile workshop spaces. In addition, it forms a place for small events and exhibitions.

The architecture of the building, which is understood as the service center for the 700 small Ernsting's Family Stores, makes reference to the visual identity of the company.

The characteristic colors and forms of the firm's corporate identity become architectonic components. They form the "fabric" from which the architecture is "tailored": red, white and black on the one hand, and a metal façade to carry the colors on the other—analogous to the delivery trucks that swarm out of Coesfeld each and every day.

While works of art from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries from China, Japan, America and Europe will continue to be exhibited in William Wight's historical 1930 edifice, "more contemporary" works are to be shown in the new building wing. This includes the collection of contemporary art, photography, African Art (as one of the inspirational sources of modern art), drawings and changing exhibitions.

The exhibition spaces for these objects of varying artistic nature are basically simple "containers", "rough-construction spaces" with respect to their spatial and materialistic formulation. They can be subdivided into smaller room components and be more completely finished. The coverings with fabrics on the walls and ceilings take up the principal of the textile-impregnated façade cladding and allow individual atmospheres to be generated for individual works and artistic disciplines.

The illumination of the exhibition spaces can either take place almost completely with artificial light (proposal A) or else with daylight (proposal B). Daylight would enter through side glass walls that are covered on the interior with delicate textiles, distributing diffuse light into the exhibition spaces. The façade side in every room thus serves as a large-scale light source. Exterior blinds controlled by light-sensitive sensors adjust the quantity of light that is allowed to enter the spaces. Glass panels, with fine metal cloth placed two feet before the building volume, form the outermost façade envelope. This reduces the incident light as well as building heat gain and serves, in addition, to protect the building from the rain.

The façade envelope made with sheets of textile-impregnated glass wraps around the entire building volume. The insulation panels found behind the glass are likewise kept in place and protected by a fine, fabric-like metal cloth. Seen from afar, the superimposition of the metal cloth generates delicate interferences—a moiré-effect that seemingly causes the façades to gently sway. A play of light arises that refers to the actual function of the grids in the glass: to regulate the light entering the building interior.

Covering the base level with a courser metal cloth placed before its façade and used as a climbing lattice for plants expands the cladding theme by one additional variation. Virginia creeper vines, wisteria and ivy climb about these nets.

In the future, visitors enter the museum through the new building wing. A connecting passerelle leads visitors from the street into the ground floor of the new building, where a view is immediately offered of the representative entrance façade of the historical building.

The existing building and the new building are linked in two ways: by a wide outdoor path that leads over the roof garden of the base level, and by an exhibition space in the base itself lit by three sunken courts. Offset stairs connects the various levels of the new building. They are each placed at the façades and allow visitors to orient themselves and peer outside. Thus, a path through the building is created that one can recall and easily find, while meandering throughout the edifice to connect all of its exhibition spaces.

For the Galician people who have emigrated in every direction of the compass, the four buildings are placed upon the ridge of the "Monte do Gaias" like "lighthouses" that are oriented to the north, south, east and west. They create an intermediate space that appears as a huge square compared with dense urban conditions, but that acts only as a large surface when compared with the expanse of the surrounding landscape. The buildings tend to mark the space more than they bound it. What does act to define, however, is the topography, the view to the west towards the city, and the view to the east to the more agrarian landscape with its implanted gardens and small parks.

The buildings are simple cubical volumes. They are specifically formed based upon their varying usages and their positions in the terrain. Common to all of the buildings is that they possess courtyards and that they are made of stone. The courtyards mediate between the large square and the small-scaled interior spaces of the buildings. This traditional building type allows the volumes to be permeable to visitors without having to be entered and "used" according to their functions.

The buildings are dedicated to seeing (Museum of Galicia), to hearing (Opera and Sound & Image Library), to learning/studying/reading (Library and Newspaper Library), and to speaking as well as interaction (Auditorium, Lecture Hall, Multi-Purpose Hall). The thematic combination of the uses and the consequential concentration of the volumes generate imposing, memorable buildings with corresponding effects seen both up close and from afar. The division into four buildings also simplifies the phased construction of the project.

The buildings are made of stone and are constructed layer by layer. Various sorts of stone from Galicia and singular stones from the entire world are either laid in courses or are poured as layers in concrete and then revealed once again by sandblasting and grinding. Either set as masonry or poured with concrete, the stones can be understood as the material memory of the history of Galicia, so to speak. Reflective metallic windowpanes contrast with the matt stone. In a literal sense their surfaces mirror the present.

The present-day agrarian landscape acts as a basis to structure the landscape interventions. In this area, like in all of Galicia, it is characterized by small-scaled patterns (Microfundismo). Individual gardens and park elements are "implanted" along paths into the agricultural pattern: for example a rain garden, a garden for the trees of the "Libredon", a place dedicated to the theme of the "Ultramar", a cabbage soup garden, a chestnut grove, a small eucalyptus forest, and more. The bush-like Matoral area to the west of the "Cidade" is to be successively reforested with native oak trees. A densified network of paths allows one to wander from garden to garden and station to station.

The siting of the building volumes on the land establishes a relationship between the same while simultaneously setting them apart. In their distribution and form they remind one of giant boulders in the landscape. The largest volume, the actual training center, is shifted to the southern edge of the gully, with a portion of its functions facing the ridge towards the lake. Both of the smaller volumes, the guest quarters, lie on the northern and western edges of the site. Smaller aboveground cubical volumes form the garage entrance and sporadic elements for lighting and ventilation. The garage itself is akin to a giant drift boulder placed into the terrain.

The form of the building—rectangles distorted into irregular polygons—allows the volumes to be adapted to the complex formations of the terrain. Intriguing interstitial spaces, halls, work areas and foyers are formed within the buildings by virtue of slight deviations from the right angle. The roof surfaces, tilted and folded for water drainage, re-form the cubes into irregular polyhedrons in the third dimension, as well.

The materiality of the new buildings is consequently stone-like. Like the exterior walls, the roof surfaces are made with two-layered concrete. Layers of concrete are poured that are "colored" with varying types of sands and gravels as "sediment-like" stratum in various thicknesses, allowing the process of pouring the concrete to become manifest. Primarily horizontal windows, at times irregular and at times regular in their placement, underscore the concept of the horizontal layering of the buildings. An exterior, slightly tinted glass used as a sliding window produces a first level of sun protection reminiscent of sunglasses. An inner sliding window takes over the insulating functions.

The access drives to the training center and the pedestrian paths between the buildings still maintain the characteristics of rural roads or garden paths—the roads are made with chip stone asphalt and the paths with gravel. The surroundings, the patches of forest, the stretches of pasture and the singular trees remain untouched. At the place where the parking garage is inserted into the ground of the gully, a slight embankment and leveling-out of the lowest point is to be made, generating a new kind, albeit artificial now, of small wetland. Birch trees, with their lateral root growth, are placed upon the underground, earth-covered building element and will grow with time into an airy grove of trees.

From the glassed entry area with the wardrobe and the janitor’s box on the ground floor, a generously dimensioned staircase leads to the hall of parliament on the first floor, which is orientated towards the square and is surrounded by a foyer zone in the north and the covered walkway in the east, which provides views of the forest. The meeting rooms and the rooms of the parliamentary parties are located on the second floor above the hall of parliament; and above them, the library and the offices are located.

Technically, the building is constructed as a loadbearing structure cast in site-mixed concrete, which is braced by the access cores. The exterior shell is composed of a second concrete layer, which is characterized by squares matching the height of the floors and coloured with different types of sand. These squares show the individual stages in which the concrete was applied, while at the same time referring to the room units behind them. A sandblasting treatment in different intensities leads to further differentiation of the surface.

Text: Hubertus Adam

The passageway leads onto the cafeteria to the left, over which the school management is located, and onto the main entry area of the HIT building to the right. Auditoriums and seminar zones are arranged in the eastern part of the northern wing, while the research areas enframe the northwestern court in a U-shape.

A reinforced concrete skeleton structure with bracing cores constitutes the supporting structure of the new building and guarantees the flexibility of utilisation thanks to the separation of construction and installation. The outer shell of the new building consists of a continuous glass façade with casement windows. A matt metallic coating in silk-screen print oscillates between opaque and transparent from one floor to the next, thus creating a colour progression which conceals the ceiling fronts and rouleaus and serves as a sun protection in the diffuse areas.

The overworked project, on the other hand, features a succession of balustrade coverings and permanent glazing with narrower ventilation wings. The greenish panes have dark stripes – at the level of the windows, due to the frames, as a rhythmical element in the area of the balustrades, which creates swinging colour progressions in a horizontal direction. The regular stripe design of the fallarm blinds additionally superposes and enhances the rhythmic effect.

Text: Hubertus Adam

The design is based on a three-story cube, which rises up from a subterranean rhizome-like connecting building. An ensemble is generated by introducing the extension building alongside the two existing structures - Villa Wesendonck and its former services building - creating a new and adequate presence for the museum institution. The extension welcomes visitors from the street side, while receding into the background when viewed from the park. The appearance of the historical park is thus scarcely altered.

On the ground floor the new building houses the ticket desk and museum shop, along with a multimedia room, which is conceived as a flexible spatial enclosure with sliding dividing walls. The new permanent exhibition is located on the two upper floors. Generously proportioned stairways and an underground hallway connecting the two buildings provide access to the area for temporary exhibitions.

This is designed as a flexible space for varied exhibition options and is artificially lit. In the new rooms for the permanent collection by contrast, natural light enters from above through skylights on the third level and on both floors through side windows that also offer vistas of the surroundings. The ceiling construction spans the entire space, allowing flexible uses of these rooms as well.

Above ground, the extension is clad with prefabricated concrete/glass-brick elements. Supplementing the windows, they also function as a source of diffuse natural light. The exterior of the building displays a subtle iridescent sheen, created by mixing quartz sand into the concrete and sand-blasting the cladding panels.

The design envisages just one simple change to Villa Wesendonck: a new stairway leads from the underground level directly into the villa’s existing staircase.

The new concept envisions a coherent architectural and landscaping plan for the entire area reaching from the old village road to the new bypass, without however competing with the village’s existing landmarks. While the administration of the national park is accommodated in the castle and an auditorium in the neighboring service building, the information center is given its own new building. This structure deliberately does not borrow its typology from the castle, but rather expresses the new use with an independent appearance. The elongated, mostly single-story structure with its folded roof and body-like openings more readily recalls a ‘natural’ and ‘landscape’ form than a building.

The layout and positioning of the building volume allow it to be entered from all sides - from the castle courtyard, from the canton road and from the old main street of the village via a newly created square. On the inside, a network of pathways connects the three entrances, simultaneously structuring the public areas, the non-public areas, and the areas subject to entry fees. Visitors move through the exhibition on a ‘circuit tour’ punctuated by opportunities to look out onto the landscape, the mountains, the village, and the sky. The exhibition rooms are designed as continuous areas, which can also be flexibly divided into smaller room units. Alternating zones of dark and light are illuminated from the side and above.

The load-bearing structure for the roof and walls is made of concrete, which on the interior is partially left untreated and in other areas plastered, painted, or faced in wood. The exterior façades and roofs are clad in local scree. Together with the gravel areas outdoors, these take up a dialogue with the built environment and the natural landscape of the nearby national park.

The football field is eccentrically situated within the athletics courses in such a manner that the ideal geometry of the surrounding oval grandstand is slightly distorted. Further differentiations arise due to the additional utilisations, which are distributed diversely on the ground floor zone: While the platform area of the stadium is reduced to a narrow strip in the area of the Badenerstrasse, Herdernstrasse and Baslerstrasse, which results in a pronounced overhang of the grandstand structure, the layer becomes larger on the northwestern side, where the main usages, which attract large amounts of people, are concentrated – a restaurant with a conference centre and a gym, which can also be used as a press centre. In addition there are special rooms for the different operators – as well as cloakrooms, showers, training facilities and massage rooms on the basement floor. An important feature is the highly flexible usage, according to the type of event.

The floating, funnel-shaped volume of the stadium body is made up of a voluminous steel support structure. Partitions follow the geometry of the running course and are fixed on the outside with bracings. The braced girder, composed of four parts, is buckled three times following a standard pattern. The first element is the protruding grandstand support, the second one constitutes the grandstand wreath, the third one forms the protruding roof, while the fourth holds the lighting wreath. Grid wire meshwork covers the bracing outer sides of the grandstand construction producing the effect of a bodylike volume depending upon the viewing angle.

The main entries are to be found in the east and the south, i.e. at the corners of the allotment designed as forecourts; the grandstand with its extreme overhang, is a welcoming gesture.

The stadium surround, which includes two further sports fields in the northeast, can be also be differentiated spatially using fences, in such a manner that the utilisations can be adapted to the respective type of event.

Text: Hubertus Adam