Office and Residential Building Schwabinger Tor, S40

Reliefs on façades have been of particular interest to Hild und K Architekten for many years now. Andreas Hild, Dionys Ottl and Matthias Haber are hereby often inspired by textile structures. For the office and residential building “Schwabinger Tor”, they have created an exterior skin of clinker-covered pre-fabricated concrete, spread like a brocade throw over all storeys. Individual stones protrude from the façade like relief embroidery. The bricks are arranged in a star pattern, emphasising their non-bearing function. Like a Gobelin tapestry, the back-ventilated curtain façade covers the actual structure beneath it.

Along the boulevards leading to the new quarter “Schwabinger Tor”, there are grand historical clinker-clad buildings. The brick puzzle pieces of the new building interestingly reinterpret this local tradition. The pre -fabricated concrete elements with inlaid clinker bricks are joined together with fitting pieces of light, acidized concrete. Horizontally, the joints are akin to small capitals and vertically they are continued to form pilasters between the windows. Thus elevating the joints, which are impossible to avoid in a building structure, to ornaments. Window parapets and ledges and the cladding of the supporting pillars on the ground floor are made of the same shade of concrete to harmoniously blend with the overall picture. The usage of the cross-shaped pre-fabricated element throughout creates several spaces where over-corner glazing opens up views to several sides.

The urban planning concept for this new development area envisions not to house different types of facilities in separate buildings, but rather combine them all under one roof. Put into practice as a theme with variations, it allows the afore mentioned asymmetrical and cross-shaped pre-fabricated element to “dress” the retail, office and residential storeys uniformly, without concealing the differences. The ground floor, comprising a foyer, restaurant and retail stores, is dominated by large areas of glazing, intersected by concrete supporting pillars, which carry the pre-fabricated elements of the first floors. On the first, second and third storeys there are offices. The façade here is structured into a grid: four cross -shaped pre-fabricated elements enclose one window element respectively. From the fourth floor upwards, the residential usage of the build ing becomes apparent. Loggias and higher windows create an ampler rhythm; the façade element was also continued in these areas with slight variations. The apartments on the fifth floor have been allocated rooftop terraces to be able to step outside and also offer additional storage space. The residential storeys and offices can be accessed through a shared foyer, with separate elevators and communal fligh ts of stairs.

As city component S40, the building is embedded in the urban planning concept “Schwabinger Tor”. The individual complexes are offset to one another to create an urban assemblage of plazas and alleys. A prominence in the western façade of the six-storey compact structure forms a head-end, which together with the neighbouring buildings encloses a small square with playgrounds. This head of the building lies at a visual axis to Leopoldstrasse and has become an eye -catcher for passers-by. Its distinctive façade will thus also contribute to creating an identity for the newly erected quarter.