德国
The Eberswalde Senior Technical School is divided amongst a group of buildings constructed in the XIX century, although they differ considerably in size and style. They are on a roughly rectangular site with a beautiful, old layout of trees and a small river, the Schwärze. Before World War II, this idyllic place was an outstanding forestry training centre and now, at the end of the century, it is to recover its former importance.
The library extension and the new institute building are important items in the improvement process for the technical school infrastructure. The two corners of the landscaped block, still unbuilt, obliged the placement of the two new elements to be based on the existing urban structure with its free layout of different types of buildings.
The new library is a simple rectangular construction with three similar stories for free access libraries. The tables, chairs and shelves have a regular repetitive arrangement. A glazed landscape links this new construction to a historic building where the administration staff work and books are stored.
The exterior aspect of the building is reminiscent of a warehouse structure formed by three stacked containers. This effect is due to the wide glass grooves running around the façade which seem to separate the stories between them. The clear reflection-free daylight enters deeply into the building through these big slashes. The small rectangular apertures are arranged in accordance with the individual workplaces and essentially provide views and spatial orientation to the outside.
The prefabricated concrete panels are similar to the glass belts of the groove-windows, and are imprinted thanks to specialized experience in screen-printing. The basis for the motifs for the prints is photos discovered by the artist Thomas Ruff in magazines he accumulated over the years in his private collection. From this collection he selected the appropriate motifs and arranged them in the horizontal belts running around the façade. The imprint on the entire façade unifies the surface; the differences between concrete and glass seem to be annulled.
The construction of the building was delayed several times due to financial reasons and was finally realized on an extremely tight budget. Regretfully, the original suggestions and drawings from Herzog & de Meuron for the interior of the library were not used, so that furniture and materials were chosen on the basis of catalogues.
Herzog & de Meuron, 1996
Like so many parts of the former East Germany, the urban landscape of Eberswalde still preserves the wounds of the war in its medieval area along with the typical prefab block architecture of the socialist period. The Technical University, founded as a Forestry Academy in 1830, is set alongside this disjointed centre, and has been subjected to the densification envisaged in the municipal rezoning plan which aims to promote growth within the existing boundaries. Closed in 1963 for political reasons, it has taken on a new impetus since being reopened in 1992. The growing number of students has made it necessary to complete the existing facilities with a library and classroom block commissioned by the Federal State of Brandenburg.
A series of independent buildings erected in the course of the 19th century draws a diffuse boundary for the campus, laid out around a wooded garden that is crossed diagonally by a stream. Occupying the free corners of the precinct, the library and classroom units complete the enclosure of this inner plaza which will be colonized as the nucleus for student activity. The new units continue the morphological diversity of the 19th century constructions that characterise the campus. The classroom block, a trapezoidal prism in brown clinker brick, and its oblique geometry take up the curvature of the stream that flows past the University refectory terrace on the ground floor. The library, on the other hand, is a parallelepiped proposed as a stratified succession of horizontal belts in concrete and glass. The terse surface formed by these panels is interrupted by the fenestration set back in the depth of the wall, coinciding with the visual plane of a seated reader on each floor.
The intentionally neutral architecture of the library is the backing for a complex iconographic programme, the result of collaboration with Thomas Ruff. This Düsseldorf artist uses the sequence of panels in different materials to structure the silk-screened motifs taken from the diary that he has been composing since 1981 on the basis of press clippings. Prototypes of aircraft that were never built and everyday domestic scenes of parents and children playing at being gods on an electric train are set alongside a Venus by Lorenzo Lotto, the ‘am Horn’ house by Gropius and a collection of beetles as a reflection of a sceptical vision of the world that takes in the breadth of history, culture, politics, and science.
Federico Covre
The Eberswalde Senior Technical School is divided amongst a group of buildings constructed in the XIX century, although they differ considerably in size and style. They are on a roughly rectangular site with a beautiful, old layout of trees and a small river, the Schwärze. Before World War II this idyllic place was an outstanding forestry training centre and now, at the end of the century, it is to recover its former importance.
Federico Covre
The library extension and the new institute building are important items in the improvement process for the technical school infrastructure. The two corners of the landscaped block, still unbuilt, obliged the placement of the two new elements to be based on the existing urban structure with its free layout of different types of buildings.
Federico Covre
The new library is a simple rectangular construction with three similar stories for free access libraries. The tables, chairs and shelves have a regular repetitive arrangement. A glazed landscape links this new construction to a historic building where the administration staff work and books are stored.
Federico Covre
The exterior aspect of the building is reminiscent of a warehouse structure formed by three stacked containers. This effect is due to the wide glass grooves running around the façade which seem to separate the stories between them. The clear reflection-free daylight enters deeply into the building through these big slashes. The small rectangular apertures are arranged in accordance with the individual workplaces and essentially provide views and spatial orientation to the outside.
Federico Covre
The prefabricated concrete panels are similar to the glass belts of the groove-windows, and are imprinted thanks to specialized experience in screen-printing. The basis for the motifs for the prints is photos discovered by the artist Thomas Ruff in magazines he accumulated over the years in his private collection. From this collection he selected the appropriate motifs and arranged them in the horizontal belts running around the façade. The imprint on the entire façade unifies the surface; the differences between concrete and glass seem to be annulled.
Federico Covre
The construction of the building was delayed several times due to financial reasons and was finally realized on an extremely tight budget. Regretfully, the original suggestions and drawings from Herzog & de Meuron for the interior of the library were not used, so that furniture and materials were chosen on the basis of catalogues.
Herzog & de Meuron, 1996
Federico Covre
Federico Covre
Federico Covre
Federico Covre
Federico Covre