Architecture: Filmic Portraits of Selected Buildings in Germany

The mechanical engineering company Trumpf is a model enterprise, founded in 1923 as a mid-sized family-owned and-run firm such as is typical in Baden-Württemberg. A world-market leader and innovator in industrial laser technology with a high equity base. A model enterprise also because the entrepreneurial family Leibinger have always remained faithful to Germany as their main business location, apart from all expansion moves to America and China. 4,500 of the firm’s world-wide total of 8,000 employees work in Germany, with around 2,000 working at the headquarters in Ditzingen near Stuttgart. And a model enterprise in the literal sense, too, because the plant is impressively beautiful.

Redesigning the company grounds

The Berlin architectural team Barkow Leibinger started work in Ditzingen in the mid-nineties with a master plan for redesigning the company grounds. The plan also included renovating the two existing production halls and the three development and management buildings and plans for future expansions into the neighbouring farmland. One essential measure was a tunnel system to connect the existing buildings and the new production halls beyond the Gerlinger Strasse.

Since then, the number of buildings has already doubled. The distribution centre, built in 2002, stands at the end of a new campus, for which the architects repurposed the former Borsigstrasse. The neighbouring spice and seasonings factory was added and remodelled to become a training centre. The most recent ingredient is the development centre, which links up to the west with the production halls with the same architectural language.

Tricky construction

Depending on one’s point of view, the new gatehouse is a construction gag, an exclamation point, or a representative building, although it is really just a glass box where the gatekeeper sits, with his back to a piece of white lecture-hall furniture, with toilets and a couple of smaller side-rooms. But the highlight is the amazing roof that juts out brashly like a baseball-cap visor, 32 metres long and only just 60 centimetres thick. It rests on four steel columns inside the glass box, and towers an intimidating 20 metres over the plant entrance. Its welded honeycomb structure, visible from below and illuminated at night from within, nonetheless lends it lightness. Not that there would be no room on the other side of the street for slender columns, but the point here was the gesture, a demonstration of the performance capabilities of high-tech construction and the application of Trumpf know-how in the area of metal construction production technology. The engineering firm Sobek did the planning and calculations for this tricky construction.

The preliminary endpoint: the company restaurant

Werner Sobek, always curious about technological innovations, found perfect counterparts in his client Trumpf and the adventure-loving architects. The main gate was not his only Trumpf contract. The recently-opened new staff restaurant, also with a Sobek supporting framework, is the preliminary endpoint on the campus.

The theme of crystalline polygonal forms, already recognisable in the distribution centre’s base, continued in the basic plan for the green campus (open-space planning by Büro Kiefer, Berlin), now determines the basic plan and supporting framework for the restaurant’s roof. To make possible a main entrance at the same ground level as the tunnel system, the building was lowered somewhat and emerges as a pentagonal solitaire from the landscape’s topography. There is nothing massive about it, it does not appear to the visitor’s eyes as a solid house, but instead looks like a roofed fairground, especially when festively illuminated at night.

Floating lightness

As with the main gate, the roof covers the space that is glassed-in on all sides and suffused with light. It all but floats on nimble, slender steel stanchions that carry the steel roof supports’ rib structure seemingly at random. The fields between the supports are filled with a secondary support system, each with pentagonal honeycombs of differing height. Where elsewhere dull ceiling grid systems compel one’s gaze into the distance, here one’s gaze wanders involuntarily upwards, following the honeycomb pattern’s rhythmic, dynamic interplay. The space has a musical feel to it, a sovereign, floating lightness that conveys cheerfulness and freedom. Inside, a second level unfolds in the rear above the kitchen area; a mezzanine, accessible via two flights of steps made of flawless black concrete. The stairs are wide enough for balancing meal trays even with traffic coming from the other direction. The restaurant is laid out to serve 2,000 meals in three shifts, with 700 seats available – 800 for events.

“Elegant dining“ in a space with a cheerful atmosphere and astonishingly pleasant acoustics is as much a part of the Trumpf company’s philosophy as is providing top-quality, optimal work stations and lounge areas, as the firm places top priority on its employees’ welfare as a precondition for their commitment and performance. Frank Barkow and Regine Leibinger deliver the fitting premium architecture for the self-image of this high-end firm.