New building from Krystaltech Lynx Europe
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Fantastic Feeling
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Direct contact between distribution, logistics, warehouse and shipping renders decisive time and value advantages. That’s why “everything under one roof” was the most essential design demand placed on the architecture and office organisation with regard to the new building from Krystaltech Lynx Europe.
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Smooth like a wave, the building of greenish, shimmering glass surges along Ludwig-Erhard Straße in the north of Reutlingen. Does Reutlingen lie along the sea? The notion would not be quite so bizarre. After all, a petrified Jurassic ocean rests underneath the Swabian Alb, which marks the horizon here. However, the architects from the Stuttgart office of wulf & ass did not have any geological allusion in mind when they designed this new building for the IT enterprise Krystaltech Lynx. “The wave” caused quite a stir; it became a trademark with its procurement in the spring of 2003. “Just drive along this road, you can’t overlook it”, says Lynx production manager Wilfried Büttner to his acquaintances. Krystaltech Lynx unites three different business segments and brands under one corporate roof: With branch offices in Spain, France and England, Krystaltech is among the top 5 special distributors for PC components in Europe. The Reutlingen-based firm produces and distributes PC’s, server solutions and notebooks for the business market throughout Germany under the Lynx label. There is a third business segment, Cebop, and whoever thinks of music in this context is not wrong. Portable computer audio systems are developed and built here: MP3 players for downloading music, notebooks — even a gag such as inflatable loudspeaker boxes. The IT industry is young as well as fast, mobile, unconventional: This dynamic self-image was matched with the appropriate outward presentation through the new building. Alsoa future signal for the city of Reutlingen, the traditional site of older, partially declining branches of industry such as textiles and tool manufacture.
The enterprise initially emerged here rather coincidentally: A graduate of the Reutlingen technical college for economics undertakes a practical training period at the headquarters in the USA during the 1980’s, returns as a representative for Europe, and from his “student’s digs” he manages the first orders via his PC. The company grows quickly, in leased buildings.
Personnel changes also come about: Stefan Baumeister, who founded and built up the Spanish branch office in Valencia, takes over the business management. The new building is the third address in five years.
The turnover today: about 230 million Euro. The distribution of computer components is a business with incredible speed. “The value of system components rapidly declines to such an extent that every year 20 percent more products must be moved just to compensate the price loss”, says company spokesperson Christian Josephi. There aren’t any “shelf-warmers” here: Five to six times a month the entire stock is turned over — approximately 250,000 pieces of goods. Or: 80 percent of the goods arriving in the morning are already out of the house in the evening — on the way to customers per forwarding. As Josephi sees it, “communication, extremely rapid communication” is the basis of this “precision-fit” business between order and delivery. Comparable to a stock exchange, products and prices are continuously determined, transport conditions are negotiated, and customers are advised via Internet, e-mail and telephone. Direct contact between distribution, logistics, warehouse and forwarding renders decisive time and value advantages.
That’s why “everything under one roof” is the most important requirement that Jaap Vogel, project support specialist for the new building, posed on the architecture. The wave – a shell comprised of glass and trapezoidal sheet metal (roof) – now vaults over four storeys with administration, distribution, warehouse and the shipping department with eight lorry loading ramps on the back side and the PC production area in the slope-side storey: Workplace for 130 employees. And that’s the most surprising effect the building entails: One expects a hectic atmosphere and loudness. And yet whoever ascends the ramps on the south side to the entrance and enters through the stainless steel door – which is located in the transparent facade like a heavy “open sesame!” portal – will be embraced by peace and quiet. A strong impression of space, expanse and light emerges through an atrium which opens up here from the basement storey 16 metres up to the roof. A tree sprouts up from the ascetic, gravel-clad soil. Behind walls made of green industrial glass one sees people working — shadowy silhouettes. A flight of stairs extends freely upward and downward from the reception level, the elm banister tapers and widens out in succession with the steel girders. A lightning pattern, a lively peak in the room. The staircase, says Josephi, is more than site development. “People bump into each other here.” All employees are on first name terms with one another, and relations are informal — like the reduced design of the reception counter: Acrylic plates in fresh tones.
“Honesty” was also an image request with regard to the building. Honesty, says Josephi, must be emphasised in this still very heterogeneous industry. And for this purpose the architecture offers raw material, visible design: The concrete mountings, the steel girders, the folds of the sheet metal roof. Other elements bring handicraft skill into play. Diligence in detail: High doors and internal window frames of warm beech wood are recessed in the glass walls.
Many are open for ventilation, and also for communications between the sections. When logistics specialist Conny Heiland opens the wooden shutters in her office wall she looks directly into the warehouse, where computer components are packed on the assembly line and stacked on pallets. There she can quickly shout to colleagues for urgent shipping information. The central axis of site development is in front of her office door: A garden with shrubs, gravel and natural stone slabs pathways. In normal administrative buildings it would be a corridor, but here it’s called a “climate buffer”. Despite the large glass surface areas the building makes do without an air-conditioning system — it even meets the low-energy standards. The water-filled pipes of a floor heating system warm-up in the summer and cool-down in the winter; the outside air is also temperature-regulated via underground channels. A climate-equalising zone is also the “belly” of the wave. Automatic ventilation flaps in the glassy interior wall behind it regulate the supply of warm or cold air. Here, on the open-plan level of the distribution section for all three business branches, is where Boris Erceg works. A dozen desk islands without partitions are dispersed between green plants. And what is the glass box in the middle of the room? Well, a table and chairs are located inside: A portable conference room on rollers (from the Stuttgart-based firm Burkhardt Leitner. Such mobility between areas and jobs is desired within the company, and is also promoted — for instance with regard to internal job advertisements.
“As far as feeling is concerned, it’s classy”, says Erceg in praise of the new building (and in between two telephone conversations conducted in English and French). Employees at Krystaltech Lynx don’t work in shifts, but there are flexible working schedules. It does happen that someone postpones knocking-off work in order to complete an assignment. The new building has brought more than merely atmospheric amenities for deputy warehouse manager Klaus Miess. And it’s not just that the warehouse storage area nearly tripled and the warehouse also has new spatial qualities. Miess discovered that the flow of goods has also been substantially accelerated by the eight loading ramps. There was only one access path beforehand. “You can knock-off work at eight in the evening and not at eleven”, he says. And that’s even though managing director Stefan Baumeister anticipates a 25 percent productivity increase due to the new building.
Ulrike Pfeil
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Mensch & Büro 6/2003 |
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Inviting lobby
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Office structures in the distribution section which permit direct communication and rapid turnover of computer components.
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Under the corrugated sheet roof.
The inviting, so-called “Green Centre” between the offices. |
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