Week 9 Exemplar

The concept of Sauerbruch Hutton’s Oval Offices in Cologne, it is not the components of this architecture that are unique, but the special touch which brings them together. Oval Offices feels effortlessly simple, taking sustainability and commercial logic in its stride and focusing on the expression of its architectural concept through its detailed design.

Their geometry is sympathetic to the spatial qualities of the site’s soft landscape and helps them to negotiate their neighbours, a muscular 12-storey 1960s structure and smaller buildings to the west.

The shallow-plan office zones and glazed corridors minimise artificial lighting requirements and the heating and cooling system taps into the Rhine as a natural energy source. The openable windows and exposed concrete soffits, which enhance environmental performance, would raise any British developer’s eyebrows.

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/buildings/office/oval-offices-cologne-by-sauerbruch-hutton/8612340.article