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Top gear: Zaha Hadid's new Central Building for BMW radically re-envisages the industrial workplace

Architectural Review, The, June, 2005 by Catherine Slessor

A windswept plain outside Leipzig is an unlikely place to find the latest cross fertilisation of serious architecture and luxury cars. Looming through the frost and fog of a Saxony winter, BMW's new manufacturing plant materialises as a sprawling agglomeration of impassive grey sheds surrounded by acres of workers' cars. From the autobahn, it looks like a nondescript shopping mall, rather than a carefully calibrated synthesis of manufacturing technology, superstar architecture, big bucks and branding. At its heart, or rather brain, is Zaha Hadid's Central Building, the formal, technical and social focus of the plant that keeps the entire operation running smoothly, capable of churning out 650 box-fresh Series 3 Beemers each day. It is a serious investment in architecture, and for Hadid, as car companies start to resemble the Medicis on wheels, a chance to build on an almost operatic scale and put her architectural ambitions to the test.

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Officially opened in mid May by Chancellor Schroder, the new plant was one of Europe's largest construction projects. With an appropriately mammoth budget nudging [pounds sterling]900 000 million (Hadid's building accounted for [pounds sterling]37.1 million), it was seen as a reassuring commitment by BMW to the industry and economy of its native land. When the company first announced its intention to build a new manufacturing complex, expressions of interest came from all over Europe. Located almost exactly at the centre of Germany, Leipzig was chosen for its auspicious geography (easy connections with BMW's Munich nerve centre) and its skilled but languishing workforce (125 000 people applied for jobs at the plant). Historically, Saxony is car-making country, with connections dating back to 1904 when August Horch founded the firm that later became Audi in Zwickau near the German/Czech border. Today, along with Audi and BMW, Porsche and Volkswagen also have plants in the region.

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Though Leipzig has fared slightly better than other former GDR cities, unemployment is still around 20 per cent and since reunification its population has decreased by some 100 000 (nearly a fifth). The half hour drive out northwards from the centre of Leipzig to the plant on its brownfield site takes you through a carious, postindustrial landscape of derelict factories and deserted streets. Yet on the northern fringe there are stirrings of revival--a new airport, motorway, the Trade Fair complex dominated by Ian Ritchie's great glazed Messehalle (AR March 1996) and, of course, BMW, whose largesse and ambition has provided the area with 5500 new jobs.

Programatically, the Central Building is a modern chimera--part showcase, part offices, part laboratory, part canteen. Drawing together these different aspects, it also mediates between factory floor and office, between white collar and blue collar, and between product and process. A key aim was organisational transparency, achieved by a fluid layering and interpenetration of space, so that people are aware of other kinds of activities going on around them. Most especially they are aware of overhead conveyors that snake around the building at ceiling height ferrying car bodies from one production department to another. As this regimented line of gleaming ghost cars glides silently past cascading terraces of open plan offices and the staff canteen (democratically shared by workers and management), there could be no more overt reminder of collective purpose.

Hemmed in between three huge production halls, the site, pre-allocated by BMW, offered particular challenges. Hadid's buildings are more used to being objects in a landscape, and Leipzig is clearly in the lineage of topographic, horizontal structures such as the Vitra fire station (AR June 1993) and Land Form One (AR June 1999).

Here, however, the taut, muscular streak of the Central Building (no slip at 40 000sqm) is dwarfed by the grey hangars of industrial production, like burly minders clustering round a potentially temperamental film star. Inside, the production halls for body making, assembly and paint finishing (not designed by Hadid) are relatively light and airy, but their scale is mind-bogglingly vast. Staff use bicycles and scooters to get around the interiors, an endearingly Monsieur Hulotesque touch amid all the robotic sophistication. Developed especially for Leipzig, BMW's hyper flexible work structures means that the plant can vary its operational times from 60 to 140 hours a week, depending on demand, with no loss of efficiency.

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The Central Building is distinguished from its lumbering supporting players by Hadid's characteristically dynamic geometry--in plan, it resembles a lightning bolt, physically connecting (and metaphorically animating) the surrounding sheds. Interstitial spaces are landscaped to become contemplative courtyards. The building's sleek horizontality is emphasised by long slits of glazing cut into its flanks (Zaha's version of Go Faster stripes, perhaps). At its north end, a huge dark blue volume, like a whale or ship's prow, nudges out from behind the sheds to mark the main entrance.