MEDIATING ELEMENTS Project: Technopark Siemens AG, Nuremberg | Germany Architects: Brückner & Brückner architects | Germany Construction: riveted / screwed Year of Construction: 2012 Product: ALUCOBOND® naturAL Brushed When change and development affect a district and its buildings, it can lead to visual chaos. The interaction of different types of buildings results in unruly grids and visual axes, lack of order in materials and proportions. That was the problem facing the architects Brückner & Brückner in their new office block project in Nuremberg. The neighbouring buildings are perimeter hou-sing blocks featuring façades punctuated by windows, opposite there is a newly built multi-storey car park with a uniform metal façade and at the back, a manufacturing building with horizontal band style façades. Add to all of this, broken visual axes and building heights. As a means of reinstating design unity and restoring order in the urban context, the architects planned an oblong volume reiterating the angularity of the car park, following the line of the road and kee-ping to the standard five-storey height of Forms & Elements 01/2015 the buildings. The rear-ventilated façade of the new building emphasizes the diffe-rent levels using walled and glazed areas and restores the lost scale in the cityscape. However, the result would have been a dull office façade if there had not been more to it. The architects broke up the uniformity of the long bands of windows: by dividing the façade and framing each band of win-dows with ALUCOBOND® panel modules. The façade’s discreet contours are crea-ted by prominent window reveals, as well as recessed joints. The modules are stag-gered like a row of bricks and generate a dynamic façade. On closer inspection, the grid configuration is not the only reference to the neighbouring buildings’ façades. The shimmering reflection in the aluminium of the colours and forms of neighbouring buildings creates an abstract reflection of a colourful, eclectic district. Material links urban opposites. Riveted ALUCOBOND® panels mirror daylight and twilight, cars, trees and different neighbouring façades. Photos: Ralf Dieter Bischoff, Nuremberg I Das Material verbindet urbane Gegensätze: Die genieteten ALUCOBOND®-Platten spiegeln diffus Tages- und Abendlichter, Autos, Bäume und die unterschiedlichen Fassaden der Nachbarschaft. 10
ALUCOBOND® | Forms & Elements
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