New office building in Stephaniviertel
1051-AZP-DE-2014
Architects: AZPML, Studio Witt
Status: Competition (2014)
Visualizer: SBDA
Budget: 7.500.000 €
Scale: 3.500㎡ Medium
Ratio: 2.142,86 €/㎡
Types: Office, Office building

Functionality / program performance

Our proposal is to maximize the useable area of the building while producing a massing which plays a contemporary, unstable massing with the traditional massing, scale and fenestration in St Stephan’s Viertel: an urban block with a pitch roof and a repetitive series of vertical windows.

The traditional window pattern and the use of masonry is ideal in terms of achieving the highest environmental performance standard. The window area has been set to be around 50% of the total surface in order to have sufficient area with a very high insulation value. The glazing content to the courtyard is reduced to less than 25% of office floor behind in order to control solar gain.

The volume is very compact, which helps both in terms of optimizing the volume but also in terms of energy performance and economy.

The entrances on the ground level and the contact with neighboring building are used as a way of distorting the grounding and the skyline of the building.

Urban integration

We are using the traditional massing in St Stephan’s Viertel: an urban block with a pitch roof and a repetitive pattern of vertical windows.

The materiality that we are exploring uses also clinker brick, with a slightly reflective enamel. The bricks have been laid out with a pattern that contributes to provide a delicate finish while remaining within a traditional palette of materials. The heavy ceramic wall will act not only as a thermal mass to stabilize the building’s temperature through all seasons, but also to absorb solar radiation and cold before it is transferred to the insulated membrane. The 50mm air cavity located behind the ceramic wall acts as a thermal break, and as a pressure equalization chamber, which improves the waterproofing capacity of the wall.

Interior design

The interior design of the building has aimed at retaining maximum flexibility for the end user. Both the plan and the façade has been designed on a grid of 1,35m, in order to fit the standards of employment space in Germany. The 16m wide plan is basically structured in three bays, two external ones of 4,5m deep to host cellular offices, and a column-free interior one for common spaces and clerical workers, which is approximately 7m wide. This layout corresponds quite precisely to the standard Kombi Type.

The vertical circulation core has been located in the area of the plan which has less availability of daylight: the inner corner.  This will allow the offices to optimize the daylight within the given plan.

Outer shape / design

The geometry of the building envelope has been defined in a very direct manner, by simply extruding the available footprint to the maximum available height, to the cornice of the adjacent building along Am Wall Avenue.

After extruding the project to the maximum available volume, we have chiseled the volume in order to adjust the roof to the neighboring buildings, and to identify formally the ground level entrances. The result of these geometrical operations is an abstract volume which, while adjusting to the surroundings in terms of massing strategy, it has a remarkable lightness and beauty.

The cladding of the building is made with a series of prefabricated elements composed out of assembled bricks, with a three-dimensional pattern, which produces an additional vibration to the external surface, a delicate play of light and shadow.

Team: AZPML Team (Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno, Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal, Manuel Eijo, Pablo de Sola, Estela Arbesu, Davide Macchi), STUDIO WITT (Jan Pietje Witt) | Model maker: BOJE MODELLBAU | Post date: 14/12/2014 | Views: 2.141