Radical engagement - Landesgirokasse headquarters

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 1998 by Peter Blundell Jones

Through a rich engagement with urban life, this German bank headquarters confounds conventional notions of office buildings as defensive monoliths.

The Landesgirokasse (State Clearing Bank) is the main savings bank in Stuttgart with hundreds of branches. As it grew, its various operations spread into many buildings, and in 1988 a competition[1] was held for a general headquarters on a site near the Liederhalle. Behnisch & Partners won with a radical proposal for a complex 100 metre tower, but this proved too controversial for the city authorities and was dropped.

A second competition held in 1991 for the current site was again won by the Behnisch office. A tower was clearly out of the question, but the new site was also more intensely urban, calling for a more engaged building. The place is called Bollwerk (bulwark), recalling the fact that it was part of Stuttgart's later fortifications of 1567, lying then just within the city's north-west corner. Although this is the highest piece of ground in the central area, it has become caught between the old centre and the later west-end, left as a transitional zone lacking in energy. Following war-time damage, the use of the hilltop site as a car park further destroyed the urban continuity, and it was a duty of the new bank building to stitch the area together again, both by making a memorable place at the top of the rise and by adding new attractions for the public.

Seven hundred people work at the bank's new building. Given the relatively generous size of site and the planners' wish that adjacent eaves lines be respected, it made sense to build the perimeter of the block up to heights of five to eight storeys, leaving the centre open. A double-loaded corridor with rooms looking inward and outward was the obvious arrangement, with vertical circulation stacks near the corners. A column and slab structure allows the greatest flexibility, and suggests the adoption of a lightweight semi-transparent facade. All this is pretty standard, but almost immediately variations due to the particular situation start to arise (a Behnisch keyword is Situationsarchitektur). In following the street pattern, the plan figure becomes trapezoidal. The office tracts to north and west remain symmetrical and parallel sided, but those to south and east taper, responding to the site shape and allowing the creation of wider communal spaces along the spine. In the upper plans, the widening corridor of the south wing leads to a staff coffee bar with a sudden southward view. In the east wing, the greater width due to squaring off the enclosed court allows the offices to be treated as two buildings linked by vertical service cores. Between these is a broad communal space with floor voids of varying shape, and extra staircases making direct links between adjacent floors. Such variations in circulation spaces give specific character to the wings and departments, acting as landmarks. Regular views of the outside world through glazed areas at each lift station provide further visual orientation.

In the offices, every effort was made to avoid uniformity. Departments are treated differently: the dealing room for foreign exchange is a big open office space on the lowest three levels of the south wing, for example. It shows itself on the court facade with continuous glazing. Walking through the building, the visitor encounters many different types of office, including those for one or two persons, group offices for four to seven people, and larger combined areas. There are variable partitioning possibilities, but on the whole the bank's policy is to create personal workplaces. Behnisch considers this important for a humane working environment, and he is sceptical of the new fashion for nomads with laptops.[2] The policy for electrical servicing is the standard 150mm floor void.

Office plans in the upper part of the building are largely repeated from floor to floor. But the top level which makes the building's skyline is quite different. Because of the elevated site, views across the city to the surrounding hills are exceptional, and are exploited with generous windows and terraces. The most dramatic gesture is the cantilevered sky-box projecting over the front facade (an entertainment suite for visitors).

Most invention is lavished on the building parts which hit the ground. This is partly a question of entrance, but most essentially a matter of how the bank engages with the public realm. Its own programme did not offer enough public face to animate all three street-fronts that it owns: the bank itself meets the public realm only at its main entrance, the service entrance at the southern corner, and the self-service cash facility at the northern corner. Unlike most banks, it does not then spend the rest of its frontage being monumental, dead and defensive. Instead, the public face is given to other public functions. There is a stylish Italian restaurant on the corner, a three-auditorium cinema on Hohestrasse to the east; and a lamp shop on Leuschnerstrasse.