This project presentation was created in cooperation with BAUMEISTER.
In Bonn, a building reveals the full dimension of architectural expression, engineering precision and factory prefabrication that characterize modern timber construction today. The Deutsche Akademie für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (AIZ) is used as a seminar and training centre for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The architects implemented their vision of a learning house with learning landscapes.
Research and development on wood as a building material have continuously raised the possibilities in precision, throughput and quality to a new (prefabrication) level in the German-speaking world over the last three decades. In the process, the construction process, protected from wind and weather, was increasingly moved to the factory halls and thus precisely calculated. In the timber construction company, the 3D data from CAD/CAM planning is transferred directly to the CNC and plant technology; there, automated carpentry and processing lines transfer the material properties of the pre-elemented wood into every conceivable architectural idea, including curved or curved free forms. Insulation is now also automatically added. On the construction site, the columns and beams, wall, ceiling and roof elements, which are pre-produced to the millimetre and delivered "just in time", are then directed to the building in a short time.
Structure is form is structure
A comprehensive combination of these timber construction qualities has been masterfully executed at the new Academy of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Bonn-Röttgen. In the building, the employees are prepared for their worldwide assignments; To this end, the Darmstadt office of Waechter und Waechter has transferred the basic principle of lifelong learning into geometric forms that are initially reminiscent of prehistoric pile dwellings from the Stone and Bronze Ages – but at the same time also bear witness to the spirit of modernity. A mosaic-like learning cluster forms the basic structure and aims to enable participation and transparency as a built guiding principle. The consistent ordering principle of the building, which can be experienced and grasped quickly, conveys support and strength. With this kind of structuralism, the architects prove themselves to be artists of geometric form, which has found a consistent counterpart in wood as a material.
Organic triad
The timber construction is divided into three parts: a transparent ground floor, above it the upper floor, shaded by external slats, and a pyramid-like roof end. This triad blends unagitated into the near-natural surroundings of the adjacent Kottenforst. Transparency, light and extensive wooden surfaces characterize the 44 training and seminar rooms. The glazed foyer with café and break area opens up what is completed by numerous dormers in the roof. In addition, large glazing of the individual learning units, which were grouped on all sides around two inner courtyards, provides a variety of insights and views. Variably divisible and protected learning spaces alternate on the edge with open spaces in the centre, which are discreetly zoned by bookshelves to form learning islands.
Systematized construction
The honeycomb-like timber structure of the academy is based on only two grids of 5.25 × 5.25 meters and 3.50 × 5.25 meters, which is supported by a skeleton construction made of glulam (glulam). The glulam girders of the roof and ceiling are supported on floor-to-ceiling glulam pendulum columns, which have a striking, cross-shaped cross-section. [...]
Source: BM 02/20 - Prefabrication
Photos: Thilo Ross , Achim Birnbaum
