The given program, the huge construction volumes and the location on the site of the former Halensee freight station in a traffic corridor that runs through the city center like a river make the BAUHAUS appear to be a solitaire: more of a large industrial or traffic building than a part of Charlottenburger-Wilmersdorf block development.
The design was about upgrading the BAUHAUS Fachcentrum in this very prominent inner-city location on Kurfürstendamm, both in terms of use and in the sense of the city. The idea includes a new interpretation of the planning already defined by the user, which gives the building a quality and an effect in the urban space that goes beyond the design of the façade surfaces.
The term "city garden" defined in the building task – actually the marketing name for the garden centre on Kurfürstendamm – offered the possibility of such an upgrade. The Stadtgarten is designed as a large conservatory, which is located in front of the sales hall and occupies the entire front facing Kurfürstendamm. The conservatory is an oversized "shop window" that advertises the BAUHAUS Fachcentrum, a spacious entrance room and an attractive usable space. Its effect is created by superimpositions of different spatial layers: the outer, large-format glass façade with its reflections, the irregularly placed concrete columns, the plants and the large abstracted image of a forest on the inner façade behind them.
While the façade of the conservatory borders directly on Kurfürstendamm and is experienced from close up as part of the street space, the façades located in the traffic corridor on the lower level of the former freight yard are mainly perceived from a distance. They are therefore designed to be viewed from a distance and attempt to respond not only to the neighbouring buildings, but also to the adjacent traffic spaces, following a horizontal structure with a robust base, high-quality cladding in the middle part and a luminous band in the upper area, which serves as a skylight and advertising space at the same time. The sculptural aluminium cladding of the façades unifies the building volumes of the specialist centre and drive-ins and at the same time structures them through the scale of the convex and concave elements. The façade reflects the light and changes colour and appearance due to different incidence of light. It also has a soundproofing function.
Source: Thomas Müller Ivan Reimann Architekten
Photos: Stefan Müller
