Precious metal

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 1997

The Institute of Applied Microelectronics in Brunswick is a research and development organisation which bridges academia and industry (mainly small companies); it is so successful that eight years after moving into its premises in an inner suburb of the city it had outgrown the existing building. A new local plan prevented much expansion to the south (as was originally intended), so extension had to take place at each end of the linear plan. At the eastern end, the addition was made using the precast concrete structural system and adaptations of the cladding of the eight-year old building. The western pavilion, on the other hand, is a much more interesting affair.

A machine hall terminated the original building to the west, an arrangement the architects decided was both formally and functionally ineffective. They proposed embedding the hall within a new two-storey structure that would add new accommodation over and to the south of the machine hall - and, incidentally, bring the total height of the wing up to that of the rest of the building, forming a much more satisfactory visual termination to the complex. Work in the machine hall had to continue throughout the building process and it was clear that to minimise disruption and mess, the new work should be prefabricated as far as possible. The architects chose steel for economy, speed of erection and adaptability. Being a one-storey building, the original machine hall had a structure of exposed steel, and with surprisingly little fuss the authorities allowed its castellated beams to be used to support the floor of the new upper storey, calling merely for 30-minute-fire rated paint and a new fire escape.

On this basis, the whole new structure could be in exposed steel. The original external wall of the machine hall is preserved as a partition in the much bigger volume, and its castellated beams are echoed in the structure of the new part. Originally, the architects had hoped that the upper floor would be one large luminous volume under the delicate steel roof trusses, but the staff council, as so often in Germany, voted for individual office spaces which are created with dry wall construction that rises to the tension chords of the trusses.

Externally, the design is clearly in the Eiermann tradition of glass walls elaborated with delicate external structures, everything honed to clearly articulate relationships of parts. The carefully proportioned, but otherwise rather dumb aluminium and glass facades are seen through veils of sunscreens which give them depth and complexity. A steel exo-structure some 800mm from the glass supports aluminium Venetian blinds which travel on vertical stainless steel wires held in tension by springs. Gridded platforms between glass and external structure allow cleaning and maintenance access, extra shading and a further element of visual complexity. Of course, this literal layering of the elevations is nowhere near new, but here, it has been achieved with rare slenderness, dexterity and clarity, powerfully demonstrating some of the magical possibilities of modern metal in construction.