GWG Office Tübingen
With its new building in the direct vicinity of the future freight depot area, GWG Tübingen has created a sustainable building that facilitates a contemporary working atmosphere conducive to communication and prominently expresses GWG‘s socially and ecologically responsible attitude.
Urban design
The 4-storey building represents its own clear, yet restrained attitude. It takes up the eaves height of the residential building on Ludwigstrasse and uses the terrain on Reutlinger Strasse to create height references to the buildings located there. The façade
structure and floor heights in turn deliberately seek a relationship to the new buildings in the freight yard area. A slight rotation of the building structure creates an outdoor area for public use opposite the future square of the Güterbahnhof area. The new building is basically seen as a mediating element in the middle of
the heterogeneous development between Reutlinger Strasse and Eisenbahnstrasse.
Building concept
The new building exemplifies a maximally open and flexible working environment. Almost all areas can be used for open-plan layouts as well as for individual offices. The construction and façade grid allows for a continuous adjustment of the room configurations, even during operation. The formation of communal
zones within the office areas, as well as both horizontal and vertical permeability in the building and the resulting visual relationships between the individual
floors, create a working atmosphere that promotes communication. Different retreat areas on the floors also provide opportunities for concentrated and focused work.
Materials and construction
With the exception of the central cores and the basement, the entire building is designed as a prefabricated timber structure, despite its classification in building class 5. Only the two cores in the center of the building are made of reinforced concrete. They serve as cross bracing for the structure and meet the requirements for fire protection.
The wooden surfaces of the supporting structure, partition walls and façade, which are left visible, make it possible to experience the qualities of wood as a
building material both inside and outside the building, create a friendly, pleasant working and indoor climate and take into account the ecological understanding of
GWG Tübingen.
Sustainability
The resource-saving and sustainable lightweight timber construction is supported in operation by an innovative „low-tech“ concept for building ventilation, which dispenses with extensive mechanical ventilation and instead relies on a natural ventilation concept via the atrium in combination with overflow openings in the facade. Energy is supplied by a PV system and in the form of municipal district heating with a primary energy factor of 0.34. The public square in front of the
building is given a green area as a moisture reservoir for regulating the urban climate in summer (climate grove).
Furniture system
For the individual workplace design, a flexible modular furniture system was developed especially for this project, with which the existing surfaces can be used and the individual workplace can be configured. In addition to functional requirements such as the size of thework surface or the amount of storage space available, the level of privacy within the office space can also be customized.
