Federal University of Public Administration
On Friday, 3 July 2026, the campus of the Federal University of Public Administration in Rostock-Lichtenhagen was officially opened. It comprises an academic building and two residential blocks with a total gross floor area of 51,200 square metres. As the buildings are largely timber-frame or modular timber structures – most of which were prefabricated at a factory in Rostock and then assembled on site – the entire construction period took just 24 months. On the day of its opening, it will be the largest modular timber building in Europe.
The new campus was built in the Lichtenhagen district of Rostock, one of five large-scale housing estates designed between the 1960s and 1980s, and now home to around 108,000 people. The university project responds to the large-scale building forms of the neighbourhood and continues its differentiated urban fabric of green public and semi-public outdoor spaces.
Three elongated building blocks frame and enclose a public park: a raised garden plateau between the two residential blocks for students. At ground-level, a green campus centre in front of the university building offers the entire neighbourhood meeting places for leisure, sport and study beneath existing trees. The interior spaces also provide a variety of additional communal areas for self-organised learning.
The university building, conceived as a ‘groundscraper’, encloses the campus to the north with a 130-metre-long folded aluminium façade. Coloured timber façades and a building form with multiple slight kinks break up the repetitive nature of the modular student halls of residence.
The extensive use of timber, together with the incorporation of a photovoltaic system, results in an extremely sustainable complex that will exceed the Silver criteria of the Sustainable Building Assessment System for Federal Buildings (BNB).
The buildings provide housing for 600 students from all over Germany who live and study on campus.
The new ‘Customs University’ will thus form part of the architectural development of its site and demonstrate how contemporary requirements can be combined with industrial construction methods.
Project Team
Architecture
sauerbruch hutton, Berlin
Matthias Sauerbruch, Louisa Hutton
Project Architects:
Jürgen Bartenschlag, Tom Geister, Philipp Koch, Ilona Priwitzer
Team:
Peter Apel, Alessandro Bucchi, Stefan Fuhlrott, Julia Garcia, Asya Güney, Lea Hirschmann,
Hannah Idstein, Lariza Johnen, Weronika Kessler, Farah Khattab, Nisa Kömürcü,
Denis Kolesnikov, Celia Landry, Catarina Medroa, Isis Perez Martin, Meta Popp,
Hilary Simon, Yinan Sun, Ludwig Thanhäuser, Gregory Then, Lu Zhang
General contractor
Kaufmann Bausysteme GmbH, Reuthe
mit Primus Developments GmbH, Hamburg
Landscape Architecture
ST raum a., Berlin
Structural Engineering
Merz Kley Partner, Dornbirn
Wetzel & von Seht, Hamburg
MEP
Ecotec, Bremen
Building Physics
Drees & Sommer, Berlin
Fire Safety
Dekra Automobil, Hamburg
