Part of the Department for Earth and Environmental Sciences is housed a in block-edge development of rather plain buildings with double-pitch roofs. The other part on the southern side of Petten-koferstrasse, however, occupies the important early iron-reinforced concrete building of the Royal Anatomy by Max Littmann, dating from the beginning of the 20th century.
For a new design, it is appropriate not to try to replicate the formal aspect of these buildings. Even though the roof pitch of the adjoining houses is repeated, the roofs are part of a new large-scale development, the size of which corresponds to the department building on the other side of the road. However, in contrast to this and in keeping with contemporary ideas of a university, the new building opens up to the general public via a café on the ground floor and, above all, via the large foyer that extends through all floors and provides generous dis-play areas for museum exhibits, making it possible to project the secrets of the sciences to the outside. In this way, the border between outside and inside is eliminated on the architec-tural plane – the research carried out in the Department for Earth Sciences can be directly experienced by the public.
