Administration and Conference Building in Garching
Rising numbers of staff and member states of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) required an extension of the administrative headquarters of the Garching Research Centre, TU Munich. The existing Fehling+Gogel building built in 1980 comprised segments of a circle in which office units are arranged around open-plan, common-use zones. Auer Weber returned to and re-interpreted this architectural vocabulary for the 270-workplace extension: three circular buildings – amalgamated on the upper floors – accommodate continuous cellular offices at the façade, a conference chamber, a cafeteria and meeting rooms. A large continuous edge cantilever of about 5 m gives the building a perceptible lightness. The sophisticated, efficient loadbearing structure goes hand in hand with the architectural concept and was developed during the competition phase by close cooperation between the two disciplines.
