Graz, Steiermark, Austria
Splitterwerk
Post by:Kitticoon Poopong
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
The Graz-based design collective SPLITTERWERK was commissioned to design this headquarters building for PRISMA Engineering, a machine and motor technology company also located in Graz. The objective was to design a structure which could house the company’s various
research and development programs, and selectively showcase the work to a varied range of often competing clientele. Thus the
building design needed to accommodate both highend testing and presentation without jeopardizing the security and secrecy with which the work is developed.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
The building form approximates a cube, measuring 18.125 x 18.125 x 17m, wrapped on all four elevations with a pixilated pattern of square panels. From a distance, these panels appear to be painted in a range of ten values of grey tone, together dematerializing the volume of the building against both the trees of the surrounding site and the clouds and sky. Thus the cubic building is at once monumental in its
objecthood in the open landscape – scale-less and immaterial – and yet utterly non-iconographic in its overall form.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
As is characteristic of their work, SPLITTERWERK was interested in developing a play between pictorial image and spatial experience. Working with the effects of dimension, distance, and time, the building’s skin was designed to generate shifting perceptions of the volume and texture. As one approaches the building, the cubic proportions of the volume become apparent, as does the finer grain of surface articulation on each panel, comprised not of a single grey tone but rather a tight grid of abstract pictorial figures. These figures might be interpreted as flowers, speaking to the surrounding fields, or gear wheels, suggestive of the highly secretive work happening inside the building.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
Each façade panel is itself nearly square, measuring 67 x 71.5-cm, and made of powder-coated aluminum, screen-printed with the various images. Integrated within this field of figures, deployed at the scale of both panel and building, windows and doors are similarly considered such that they essentially disappear within the composition of the façade.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
At the interior, individual office spaces are wallpapered with images of the surrounding Eastern Styrian landscape, creating a conceptual tension between the interior of the building envelope (narrative and pictorial) and the visual effects of its exterior panels (abstract and spatial). In this sense, the decorative strategy for both interior and exterior is conceived with certain landscape sensibilities in mind; a visual context which is simultaneously pictorial in its framed references and affective in the atmosphere it produces.
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| Photo © Courtesy of Nikolaos Zachariadis |
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| situation plan--drawing Courtesy of Splitterwerk |
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| ground floor plan--drawing Courtesy of Splitterwerk |
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| first floor plan--drawing Courtesy of Splitterwerk |
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| second floor plan--drawing Courtesy of Splitterwerk |
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| third floor plan--drawing Courtesy of Splitterwerk |
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| mezanine floor plan--drawing Courtesy of Splitterwerk |
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| interior elevation--drawing Courtesy of Splitterwerk |
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| section--drawing Courtesy of Splitterwerk |
The people
Architects: SPLITTERWERK
Location: Graz, Steiermark, Austria
Project team: Irene Berto, Mark Blaschitz, Erika Brunnermayer, Marius Ellwanger, Hannes Freiszmuth, Johann Grabner, Edith Hemmrich, Ute Himmelberg, Bernhard Kargl, Benjamin Nejedly, Josef Roschitz, Maik Rost, Ingrid Somitsch, Nikolaos Zachariadis
Client: PRISMA Engineering Maschinen- und Motorentechnik GmbH
Project Management: Ingenos ZT GmbH
Structural Consultant: werkraum zt-gmbh, Peter Bauer, David Lemp
Building Services Consultant: Ing. Rudolf Sonnek GmbH
HVACR Design: Guenter Grabner
Energy Consultant: Dr. Tomberger ZT GesmbH, Hannes Veitsberger
Electrical Design: Erich Watzke, Moskon & Busz GmbH, Rudolf Busz
Project Area: 1,400 sqm
Project year: 2009
Photographs: © Nikolaos Zachariadis
