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The interpretation of this pixel image lies in the eye of the beholder. Where one person sees a symbol of digitalisation in the arrangement of 1 and 0, another picks out the precision and aesthetic appearance of a façade.

Eva Maria Herrmann interviews Professor Paul Lukowicz, head of the Embedded Intelligence research department at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH)

The »Futurium« – a joint project by the German Ministry of Education and Research, scientific organisations, foundations and various research companies – aims to provide insights into the world of tomorrow and present scenarios for possible futures through exhibitions, events and the laboratory. Using two large-scale screens, visitors are able to keep these future worlds connected to the reality of the world outside.

If there is currently a major focal point in discussions about the German car industry, then it is probably the issue of diesel. Which is a shame. For a highly-promising electric car made in Germany called the e.GO Life is poised for launch. The vehicle’s range is modest, but the e.GO Life was deliberately designed to be a cost-effective city car. The creative visionary behind it is the entrepreneur Günther Schuh, who co-developed the »StreetScooter« electric van acquired by Deutsche Post in 2014.

With his archaic minimalist concert hall in Blaibach or his renovations of old farmhouses, Peter Haimerl has taken on a special role in the German architectural scene. This developer, who grew up in the Bavarian Forest and now works in Munich, passionately champions the retention and continuation of historic building traditions. Not as a way of escaping the real world but in order to extend the repertoire of contemporary architecture and to create a clear contrast to the sometimes very arbitrary zeitgeist.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) provides new strategic solutions for the planning and realisation of construction projects as well as the operation of buildings.

With projects like the Urban Nation Museum, residential buildings like Paragon or Villa M, and the ice stadium in Schierke, GRAFT have made a name for themselves outside architectural circles too. They are currently curating the German pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Together with former Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records, Marianne Birthler, and using the example of the division of Germany, the architectural practice is making an intelligent contribution to the current debate about nations, division and protectionism.

Museum visitors cannot see them, but numerous storage facilities hold valuable historical artefacts. The collections of the Tyrolean State Museums comprise millions of historical treasures, which were preserved in eleven storage facilities at eight locations until a competition was held in 2013 to build a central collections and research centre. Architectural firm Franz&Sue was selected for this with their simple but succinct idea. The massive volume disappears underground and only one flat, almost quadratic, monolithic building structure rises inconspicuously out of the ground, cutting into its hillside location.

With office tower 312 Vista, Anmahian Winton Architects have created an elegant landmark visible from afar in the western part of the Turkish capital Ankara. The 14-storey building offers local and international high-tech companies luxury business spaces with sophisticated design and state-of-the-art IT infrastructure. A lobby, reception and café are housed on the ground floor. In terms of urban development, the newbuild is taking on a key role in the rapidly developing, heterogeneous area of the city.

The residential high-rise tower at 56 Leonard Street designed by Herzog & de Meuron stands for private living in the urban density of New York. Despite the compromised configuration, the building offers custom floor plans, personal open spaces, exciting views, neighbourhoods, meeting places and community spaces – and, as a special sign of user autonomy, manually opened floor-to-ceiling windows.

The outdated building Rijnstraat 8 in The Hague, which was once the location of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Development, was transformed by OMA under the direction of Ellen van Loon into a modern office environment with exciting references to the surrounding city. Today, the government building exudes openness and transparency, which is also thanks to the opening of the ground floor and a new, large-scale glass façade.

The Villa Kymmendö property in the Stockholm archipelago is the fulfilment of a big dream for a family of five. The summer house lies in the middle of a private island on a small hilltop, glazed on all sides and surrounded by wind-blasted pine trees, rocks and the sea. It was designed by Jordens Arkitekter. A cantilevered plane makes the building appear to float above the ground.

The redesign and renovation of the area around the main station in Arnhem has taken almost 20 years. Since 1996, when it won the competition for the urban development plan, the Amsterdam architectural firm UNStudio worked on the project with engineering firm Arup. With the completion of the new station building, the project is now largely finished.

The site of a disused railway in Mülheim an der Ruhr is now home to the recently opened new campus of the Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences. The complex designed by Arge HPP/ASTOC Architects integrates eight bright, clinker-brick buildings in an open ensemble with a high-quality urban design.

Subterranean, dark and twisting, pierced by small patches of light and rays of sun finding their way through the few openings into the exhibition space at the Archeopark museum in Pavlov in the Czech Republic – the striking exposed concrete building is reminiscent of a cave.

Using precise, composed volumes with a neobrutalist appearance, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara from Grafton Architects, based in Dublin, have succeeded in creating a striking combination of urban presence and surprising spatial qualities. The two architects won the coveted RIBA International Prize in 2016 for their design of the recently opened Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC) in Lima. The pair will be curating the 16th Architecture Biennale in Venice next year.

Architecture is an export commodity in a globalised world. Not in terms of a specific design style, but in the form of international architects, institutions and networks. The Network for Architecture Exchange (NAX), an initiative of the German Chamber of Architects, has become an established instrument and global network partner for German and non-German architects, engineers and specialised planners since it was set up in 2002. PROFILE spoke to Claudia Sanders, project coordinator of the network, about “made in Germany” and the work of NAX.

The two »Friends« high-rise apartments at the Hirschgarten in Munich are the perfect example of how urban living is changing, not only in the clear identity of the façade style, but also through the architectural implementation of a sharing concept as a future-proof living model.

Based on Mediterranean structures with low-rise buildings and narrow streets, the architectural practice Herzog & de Meuron designed an urban »fabric« for the new headquarters of BBVA bank on the northern periphery of Madrid. An oval tower soars up out of the »fabric« as a highlight and city landmark. A high proportion of glazing with slimline Schüco profiles on doors and façade units allows a large amount of natural light to penetrate the interior despite the high density.

Since its reconstruction after World War II, the Dutch harbour metropolis of Rotterdam has been an experimental field for town planners and architects. The most recent example is the new, futuristic market hall. The unusual project of the MVRDV architectural practice consists of a 100 metre-long and 40 metre high hybrid construction in the form of an urban triumphal arch. There are 96 market stalls on the ground floor, while the complex, arched construction overhead integrates 228 apartments with spectacular views of the inside of the market hall and its colourfully designed vaulted ceiling.

Trained in the fields of architecture, product design and civil engineering, Patric de Hair is a founding partner of Plan.One ccs GmbH and head of the Digital Innovation Lab at Schüco. Profile met him in Berlin to talk about the new platform Plan.One.

One of the focus topics at BAU 2017 was FACID, the flexible textile façade. With this product, the wide-ranging design freedom for the building envelope is being further extended – with the customary Schüco quality.

Until now, only humans have been capable of amassing, storing and sharing knowledge. However, experts such as physicist and science writer, Dr Ulrich Eberl, say that an attack on the most innate human trait is imminent. Intelligent systems – be it visible robots or invisible software – will be able to learn, plan and behave independently using reason and cognitive skills. Will robots then become the educated citizens of the next generation, and will we just stand and watch?

The Europäisches Hansemuseum is Europe's largest museum dedicated to the history of the Hanseatic League. It blends in harmoniously with the historical context of the old town of Lübeck, which is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Opened in 2016, the AWA boutique hotel lies in the eastern part of the small city of Puerto Varas, the tourist, cultural and social hot-spot of the lake region in Chile’s Zona Sur. Here – a good 1000 km from the capital Santiago– is where the endless expanses of Patagonia begin on the Chilean side of the continent and stretch far south to the Tierra del Fuego.

3XN combine Scandinavian clarity and functionality with individual forms and precise details. Following early statement projects like the Danish Embassy in Berlin which was opened in 1999, the Copenhagen-based practice has created a variety of more internationally recognised projects in recent years, among them the National Aquarium Denmark in Kastrup and the Bella Sky Hotel in Copenhagen. Current projects for the architects include designing the new headquarters of the IOC in Lausanne.

Closed in 2006, the Val-Benoît University Campus in the Belgian city of Liège is to be given a new purpose as a mixeduse inner-city district. In an initial step, the former Institute of Construction Engineering was renovated and re-opened at the end of September as a flexible business centre available for letting.

Between Berlinʹs main railway station and the government quarter, KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten built Germanyʹs »greenest« new office construction, which is certified by the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB). With its clearly outlined volumes and rhythmically structured façade, the building offers high-quality, comfortable spaces – directly on the banks of the Humboldthafen.

The region around Ålesund is one of the most popular tourist hot-spots in Norway.

30 people from 25 different disciplines are founding a company. They are all equal; there are no bosses. Everyone is friends with each other too. Surely it can only go wrong? The Berlin innovation consultancy Dark Horse is living evidence to the contrary. The agency has been its own prototype for new ways of working for seven years.

The new office building of the National Institute of Social Security (INSS – Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social) is situated in an area of urban development in northern Granada, where a great deal of construction activity is still taking place. With its angular shape which is reminiscent of a boomerang, it almost completely covers the triangular plot. The representative newbuild, which is oriented towards the three surroundings streets, has a fascinating vertical dimension and contributes significantly towards shaping the newly created cityscape.

The ETA model factory on the TU Darmstadt campus is the prototype for a modern industrial building. Here, research is carried out into how energy can be saved by intelligently networking all building and production components. The Schüco Parametric System has been used in a real project for the first time.

At first glance, you would expect the Sharifi-ha House with its façade made from rotatable cubes to be from one of the metropoles in the Western world. However, the innovative residential concept is situated in the middle of Tehran, the capital of Iran. And despite abstaining from ornamental elements and traditional materials and colours, it displays more affinity with the construction methods of traditional Persian houses than first thought.

Participatory design is playing an increasing role all over the world. In Europe, it is manifest in this year’s architectural biennale in Venice and in the search for new housing models. We spoke to Professor Carlo Ratti, who directs the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a multidisciplinary research initiative, which explores the interaction of people, digital technology and the city.

The palm house in the Botanical Gardens documents an eventful part of Cologne's history. It was built in the 1860s as a magnificent glass palace and destroyed by a hail of bombs in the Second World War, before being rebuilt in the 1950s in a much more simplified form. Although very little still recalled the erstwhile glass palace, the building was added to Cologne's monument register in 1980.

Globalisation, urbanisation, climate change and digitalisation – these represent the burning issues of our time. The key players from urban planning and architecture therefore need to declare their position as well. Consequently, a one-week, interdisciplinary university conference on the topic of “Future City 2050” took place in Detmold and Bielefeld in September.

Over the last few decades, Gerber Architekten has been able to realise numerous laboratory, research and educational building projects, such as the Institute of Physics at the University of Rostock, the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt and the Dortmunder U vocational colleges. A number of striking office buildings can also be added to the list, including the Harenberg City Center and the RWE Tower in Dortmund. Time and again, this established architectural practice has been able to use its residential buildings to create places where the inhabitants feel comfortable and enjoy living. The main priority at Gerber Architekten...

The Milan-based large-scale project “CityLife” combines living, working, shopping, green spaces and public areas in one complete ensemble – a remarkable feat of architecture and town planning which also had the goal of upscaling the district near the old exhibition centre from the very beginning. The office towers designed by Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Arata Isozaki are already considered to be new landmarks of the Italian metropolis.

A portrait of Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter

Robots are becoming increasingly similar to humans and may soon be our new helpful housemates. Professor Tamim Asfour is Head of the Department for High Performance Humanoid Technologies (H2T) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the »father« of the humanoid robot ARMAR. Our interviewer met the friendly researcher on the KIT open day. She was immediately won over by his infectious enthusiasm for the topic: owning your own robot that cleans and tidies would be truly revolutionary …

Communication

Identification

Relationships

Building Information Modeling (BIM)

3D printing has experienced rapid development in the last ten years. The equipment and printable materials are still very expensive. However, the possibilities afforded by the process, including in the area of façade technology, are driving research forward – particularly the prospect of cost-effective customisation. In Amsterdam, a team of researchers is currently working on fabricating an entire canal house by means of 3D printing.

Intelligent urbanisation, people and buildings as well as energy efficiency and resource conservation set the pace at BAU 2015 in Munich. In line with this, Schüco presented its product and project solutions for newbuilds and existing buildings at Stand 301 in Hall B1.

Schüco offers numerous systems for private residences. Whether a newbuild or a renovation: Schüco window, door, sliding and façade systems combine energy efficiency with the most exacting demands in terms of comfort, security and design. The components can be automated and added according to your individual requirements.

Previously, individual, three-dimensional free-form façades entailed numerous special constructions. Introduced at BAU two years ago as a prototype, the Parametric System presented by Schüco this year is ready for series production. From planning and fabrication through to installation, this solution offers an end-to-end, digital data chain.

Building renovation – a topic addressed by politics and society in equal measure. A large proportion of the office and residential buildings in Germany still do not meet modern energy efficiency requirements. But clients and users want to keep the loss of utility and rent caused by renovations as low as possible. This calls for systems that feature a high level of prefabrication and can be easily installed in the existing fabric of the building.

Whether it’s integrated solar shading, decentralised ventilation, automated windows or attractive façade lighting, networked building technologies are en vogue, and Schüco has intelligent and sustainable solutions to offer. In this topic studio, we will show you the ease with which these efficient technologies can be integrated into the building envelope.

Analyses show that the proportion of the building envelope that is opaque is growing. Architects are increasingly designing punched openings and ribbon windows, which means that fully transparent façade solutions are less common. As a result, Schüco presented at BAU a prototype with a closed workflow, which allows architects’ concepts of façade cladding to be realised with opaque areas that can be freely parameterised.

Schüco supports investors, architects, building consultants and partners in all project phases – from the initial idea through to dismantling a façade. This includes advice on certification, designs using sustainable systems, environmental product declarations and recycling the building envelope.

The „Morgenstadt: city insights“ (m:ci) project started with 10 Fraunhofer Institutes in 2012. M:ci deals with sustainable urban developments, which is a result of urbanization, increase in population and climate change.

When considering the work of SANAA, you would like to think that it could not be reduced any further. But then Kazuyo Sejima (*1956) and Ryue Nishizawa (*1966) produce another surprise with a design that puts previous ones in the shade. The architect duo from Tokyo, who are noted for their puristic buildings, were awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2010.

Parametric design is an approach whereby the results of process-oriented development are displayed for the designer in real time. Marco Hemmerling, Professor of Computer Aided Design at the Detmold School of Architecture and Interior Architecture, encapsulates the essence of this process-oriented approach thus – designer and design are in direct dialogue, and the architect develops his own tool. In this way, the computer has developed from being a simple drawing tool to being a design medium with its own qualities and requirements.

profile conducted a very open and personal interview with Annette von Hagel about sustainable building, the role of the EU, the government and the Federal States in setting an example, values and value retention in architecture, energy efficiency, renovation and conversion. For Annette von Hagel, it is always about people, quality of life, and a positive future for everyone.

Under the leadership of Gerhard Hoffmann, the ifes Institute for Applied Energy Simulation and Facility Management from Cologne has devoted itself for over 20 years to a topic which is now high up on the political agenda: the energy revolution and the question of how to construct buildings energy-efficiently and use them sustainably. This is a portrait of a pioneer in the development of holistic energy and climate concepts for new and renovated buildings.

About one and a half years ago, an architectural article was published in the German weekly Die Zeit defending the house of Christian Wulff in Großburgwedel against its critics. It posited a link between problems of taste and communal values. “Residents of a town or village are part of a value community – not just economically, but also in terms of culture and architecture. The question is: what exactly are these values? And how can we agree on them?” What are we talking about when we speak of values? And how do values find their way into architecture? An article by the architectural theorist Professor Achim Hahn.

When constructing a private house or apartment, the “right” amount of individuality not only refers to creating attractive living spaces, but also to designing properties that maintain their value in the long term. Nowhere is the demand for customised design greater than within one’s own four walls: buildings and apartments should suit individual living preferences and allow occupants to identify closely with them. Architects therefore have to plan for today’s users. However, if they want to design sustainable buildings, they should also bear in mind what future generations will want. How individual is architecture permitted or obliged to be...

People have a great deal of experience communicating with other people from which they are divided by local or temporal differences. Whether by telephone, fax or e-mail, technology has changed the way people communicate with each other. Today however, we are experiencing a phase of technological interpersonal communication which leaves previous developments in the shadows: Global networking via the internet.

Planning and construction are becoming ever more polarised: design freedom through technical possibilities on the one hand and enormous economic pressures, material, resource, and energy efficiency on the other. The challenge for architects and planners, is to combine both aspects in a positive way and thereby create an architecture in which these polarised arguments do not contradict each other.

To take each competition as potential for the practice‘s development and to be conscious of sustainability as a design parameter are the components of success for Henning Larsen Architects – not forgetting of course, their Scandinavian roots.

Our society is changing: On the one hand through demographic development and on the other hand through changes in social structures. The significant increase in life expectancy and simultaneous individualisation is leading to serious change. A society is developing which places great emphasis on the individual freedom to choose and decide, as well as traditional values like community and human ties. In some cases individuals are living out their lives completely independently of what many would see as a restrictive (family) structure. Thanks to new means of communication and changing modes of living, there are now many possibilities to...

Since 2007, more people live in cities than in rural areas, and the trend continues. According to UN forecasts, in 20 years more than 70 % of the world’s population will live in cities. While in 1800 there were only three cities in the world with more than one million inhabitants – London, Beijing, and Tokyo – now there are around 450 cities with a population of over a million.

We live in a crisis-ridden age that is pointing the way to the future. Political unrest, the economic and euro crisis, and not least the planned phase-out of the use of nuclear power are kindling discussion about the topic of “responsibility”. People are currently being called upon to show responsibility and act conscientiously in various contexts. A myriad of aspects are dealt with, including people’s responsibility towards their fellow human beings and the coming generations; the responsibility of policymaking and economics for environmental and climate protection; the responsibility of industry and research for developing new technologies;...

“Incredible India” aptly describes the Indian market. The property market is extremely diverse in a country with more than 1.2 billion people living in an area of approximately 3,287,590 square kilometers – nine times the size of Germany. The constantly growing market has enormous potential and planners have various possibilities to get a foothold there, maintains architect Sven Schmedes, who runs a German project management office in Mumbai.

Responsibility is a key contemporary concept. In more and more areas, people are expected to assume greater responsibility, whether it’s private pension schemes as a citizen, democratic participation in civil society, or the social responsibility of companies. The Center for Responsibility Research (CRR) of The Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities analyzes the growing responsibilities placed on social players, institutions, and organizations from a cultural standpoint.

Currently, there is fierce competition between the growth regions of China and India to see who can reach the Western standard first. This is coupled with an enormous construction boom with virtually Western construction standards and with many regional peculiarities that can be planned, but that may be unpredictable.

Prof. Manfred Hegger, TU Darmstadt, is the president of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB). For him, the issues of responsibility and sustainability are closely entwined. Only an ecological, economical, and socially responsible building can be a sustainable building.

The Schüco Technology Center in Bielefeld is one of the world’s largest testing centers for windows, doors, façades, and solar technology. It has been known for quality, reliability, and longevity. A recent complete renovation and an extension have made the center even more efficient.