The campus of the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences has a strong identity with its intensive greenery, the clear urban structure and the existing reinforced concrete skeleton buildings. The new building for Building N picks up on these defining design elements and transfers the principles of the 60s and 70s into the present. Scientific exchange and interdisciplinary communication are the central guiding principles in order to form a new, open and research-focused campus component.
The new building of Building N opens up to the campus via a large ground-floor undercut. Above the entrance, an eight-meter-high oversized fingerprint subtly refers to the user, the sensor technology department. The work was conceived by the artist Jörg Mandernach from Ludwigsburg.
The precise placement of the new building continues the strictly orthogonal structure of the campus. The previously undeveloped northwest corner of the campus will be filled by building N. With its square footprint, the new building is an important link that mediates between the different directions of the existing buildings.
The floor plan organisation follows the differentiated requirements for room sizes and uses. The four main floors are arranged by a communication zone defined in the middle of the building, which bundles all the circulation areas of the new building and provides a view of the campus and the adjacent forest landscape.
The window strips are clad with perforated, vertically rotatable metal slats. They make it possible to fine-tune the appropriate degree of opening depending on the time of day and season. When open, the slats break the hermetic nature of the research machine and create a lively play of light and shadow on the façade.
[Source: Schulz und Schulz Architekten GmbH] (http://schulz-und-schulz.com/projekte/gebaeude-n/)
Photos: Gustav Willeit
