Remodelling the Zollinger Halle at Ludwigsburg/Neckar
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Perspectives Enacted
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Lucky Ludwigsburg: with an impressive revitalisation concept, an ambitious local investor has reintegrated into its urban overall structure a building complex previously written off as industrial fallow. Formerly used as production shops for “Eisfink” refrigerators and huge copper boilers for beer breweries, they have of late come to be an inspiring domicile for film-making and other media ventures.
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Spectacular success was achieved by the renewal and rededication of the “Zollinger Halle”, a hall measuring 130 x 25 metres and -protected under the heritage act. Roofed over by an original filigree wooden wagon vault of 1925 to '28 vintage, this former workshop was reconstructed by Stuttgart-based architects Bottega + Ehrhardt with due regard to preserving the aura of its interior. Named after its inventor, the Merseburg senior government building officer Friedrich Zollinger, the aforementioned lozenge-shaped rod system consists of machine-prefabricated laminated timbers little short of three metres in length throughout. Its underlying patent has made building construction history.
Small wonder, therefore, that to the architects in charge the reconstruction of it was a major challenge. Albeit that nothing prepares the visitor for the impressive ambience inside the hall except for the leitmotif provided by sea freight containers inserted for accessing the interior. And, indeed, it doesn't really matter which of the three selfcontained sections of the hall is entered first. Because it's the roof that makes the music, and the sovereign way the many keys of the concert are handled by the architects such that the spatial conception is intensified by so and so many changes of perspective. Thus, for instance, they installed side galleries in the biggest unit with its 2,100 m² of floor space, which is now used by the H2e advertising agency. It is only owing to the trebleaisle breakdown that proportions and structures conceivable to the eye can come into being, with the lower-lying nave arcade embedded seemingly as a matter of course. Whether out of the “belly” of the agency, down from the aisles or forward to the face of the arch, where immediately under the roof of the hall a “skyroom” juts out on an existing concrete plinth – all perspectives are enacted full of tension. Not to speak of the spatial effects which come with looking down from the very height of the central conferencing room. With this implementation of a raised “stage”, Bottega + Ehrhardt are playing also in the 300 m² of floor space of the smallest unit finally occupied by the Eisfink company. Here it is a sculptural building unit jutting out with its horizontal volume such that it interferes the least with the original spatial effect of the hall.
Susanne Tamborini
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md 3/2004 |
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The hall has been broken down into three utilisation units. Shown here, the view of the largest section, now the domicile of H2e advertising agency. The sea freight containers, leitmotif of accessibility from outside, date back to an incipient draft by Clive Wilkinson Arch., Los Angeles.
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The architects have enhanced the overwhelming spatial impression by changing perspectives from a variety of levels and (jutting out) volumes.Here's a view from the "skyroom" of the H2e section.
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| The slim stairway (above) leading down between concrete-grey carpeting-covered wall slabs accesses the heart of the agency, a mix of working and communication zones with “streets” and open places like in a town. The modular furniture scenario stands its ground self-confidently under the dominating barrel vault. |
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