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Coop Himmelb(l)au's BMW World | |
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Coop Himmelb(l)au's BMW World Wolf Prix, cofounder of Coop Himmelb(l)au, had high aspirations for the new BMW facility, striving for "a city landmark... not only a temple but also a marketplace, meeting place and information centre," comparing it to the Acropolis in Athens. He dreamed of building huge unsupported spaces for architecture, with spaces "that changed like the clouds." BMW Welt is one in a series of high-profile projects that German engineer Manfred Grohmann and his firm, Bollinger and Grohmann, have worked on with Coop Himmelb(l)au. Others include the 2007 addition to the Akron Art Museum in Ohio, with its seemingly floating "roof cloud," and Given the dramatic design aspirations for the BMW building, Grohmann says the major challenge was "the game with gravity." The grand roofscape was conceived of as a fifth facade. Its form is like an inverted landscape, dipping down into and rising up from the space below. Spinning Top The most striking thing visitors see from the road is the enormous steel-and-glass double-cone form — 45 meters (148 feet) in diameter, rising 28 meters (92 feet) high, and shaped like a spinning top. This event and exhibition space can hold more than 800 guests. The form's digitally fabricated facade includes over 900 different glass panels relating to a module grid of 5.5 meters (18 feet). According to Prix, the double cone was conceived of as a framework shell made of horizontal rings. The two ascending, spiral-shaped diagonal bands turn the same way to heighten the feeling of dynamism. The structure also serves as a main roof-support element. Inner World of BMW In the main hall, the billowing steel "cloud" roof creates pockets of space, allowing spatial differentiation without many interior walls. The inside of BMW Welt doesn't feel clinical, nor too large and impersonal, as is sometimes the case with massive spaces like this. It is light-filled, airy, and gives visitors a feeling of being at once outside and protected from the elements. Although not much like St. Mark's Square in Venice — which Prix cites as an inspiration for the main hall — the building does have a bit of a courtyard feeling. As a uniting concept, the roof creates an environment to encompass the diverse functions and visitor experiences of the building, from arriving across the road via the external footbridge to dining in one of four eating areas to signing the paperwork for a new car in the marketing suite. The design intention was a low-tech concept that could be optimized ecologically using high-tech methods. Prix's "covered marketplace" concept inspired Grohmann to develop his ideas about using engineering tools for form-finding. Creating a Roof for the World Grohmann says his strategy was to apply virtual forces in the computer model to an area of support to get a deflection, and then, using these deflected areas as the low areas of a roof structure, he could optimize and test the results, allowing for a structurally efficient and dynamic roof. There is an upper and a lower layer of roof structure, and the distance and depth between them varies along the roof geometry. The shaping of these grid girder layers was developed through testing fictitious load scenarios. These studies led to the definition of the upper surface, which was pushed up under its own negative weight, and of the lower roof structure, which was shaped by forces exerted down upon it relating to the columns and building below. According to the designers, using these imagined load scenarios, a resulting roof form was tested and optimized in terms of meaningfulness of load transfer. Grohmann says that the initial competition design included a forest of columns holding up the roof. Engineering studies were undertaken on how to rationalize them, and, as a result, the majority of the columns were omitted. The roof now bears down on 11 specially shaped concrete-composite columns and on the "Gastro Tower," a mushroom-shaped restaurant core. The facade's bent construction system, with glass panels and glass-bead-blasted stainless steel, realizes the design intent while eliminating the need for expansion joints in the roof and allowing the warping of the massive undulating roof to be taken up by the elastic bending of the posts. During construction, it took 26 lift towers to hold up the roof, which was raised by hydraulic lifts and eventually lowered onto the structure. >>> Discuss this article in the Architecture Forum...
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