FECO-FORUM
LRO Architekten
ARCHITECTS
LRO Architekten
STRUCTURE
IGB - Beratende Ingenieure
AREA
3500.0 m2
YEAR
2007
CLIENT
Feederle - Verwaltungsgesellschaft dbR
PROJECT TEAM
Katrin Holzer, Matthias Hackmann
LOCATION
Karlsruhe, Germany
BUDEGT
3.5 M Euro
PHOTOGRAPHS
Roland Halbe
Text description provided by architect.
The new feco-Forum building in Karlsruhe was erected in a faceless industrial area.
The structure is divided into three parts: the ground-floor and first-floor accommodate a show room and office space.
More office rooms, used exclusively by another firm, are located on the second floor. To allow for this situation, a staircase was conceived for completely separate use. And finally, at the very top, an elongated floor plan affords a wonderful view of the hills to the east, just beyond the highway.
Entrance into the building is defined by varying light: one steps out of the light into the murkiness of the staircase, only to emerge into the light of the show room again.
At first, one perceives the frontal light from the windows on the street side, then skylights in the middle of the room, and finally the slanted light along the northern wall, accompanying the stair-like progression of the terraced exhibition space.
The floor-finishing is done in burnished marble-speckled mastic asphalt. Fecos own partition-elements are used for most of the interior wall-structure. A facade of corrugated, darkened aluminum gives the building its exterior character. The climatic treatment of the solid structure is accomplished by concrete core activation.
