New building of an education centre for energy efficiency and barrier-free technologies

Neubau Technologie – und Bildungszentrum für Energieeffizienz und Barrierefreiheit, Schwarzplan

New building of an education centre for energy efficiency and barrier-free technologies for the Cologne Chamber of Crafts

Client

Chamber of Crafts, Cologne (Germany)

Location

Hugo-Eckener-Straße, Cologne (Germany)

Services

Integrated Design

Architecture
Mechanical and Electrical Engineering
Structural Design
Fire protection
Building physics
Urban Design

In German society, the skilled trades traditionally represent the highest precision and quality. Yet many skilled trade sectors are increasingly competing directly with industrial manufacturing. The TBZ, demonstrates that the skilled trades have by no means lost out to industrial manufacturing techniques and will continue to be an economic power in future.

This high-tech new building forms a new, assertive urban development starting point for the Cologne Chamber of Crafts. The new building‘s positioning enhances the education centre’s main access, while a new, sound-insulated outdoor area in front of its canteen provides an enclosed space for activities and practice. The main idea behind the building’s design is to promote communication within the building and between the building and outdoor space in the context of a knowledge exchange. This has been achieved by arranging a communicative forum as a spatially connecting element between the ground and first floors and by the buildings highly transparent facade.

The TBZ facade combines aspects of a communicative forum with the new building’s high technical standards in an innovative way. Oversized, floor-to-ceiling windows offer maximum transparency and promote interdisciplinary knowledge sharing by deliberately stimulating visual communication between inside and out. Light deflecting louvers in the space between its (triple glazed) window panes provide protection from direct sunlight and glare in summer without impeding views (in and out). By using vacuum insulations and other „state-of-the-art technologies“, the building easily surpasses the thermal insulation standards set in the German Energy Saving Ordinance (EnEV) by up to 55%. An intelligent, horizontal roof hatch, similar to car sunroof, provides unusually high quality access to the building’s roof. In future, Chamber trainees will to learn how to work on innovative solar power systems using training installations.