Science Center Otto Bock

Berlin, Germany

Add To Collection

Other Projects by Gnädinger Architekten

Add To Collection

Museum of Historical Marksmanship

Science Center Otto Bock

Berlin, Germany

Firm

Gnädinger Architekten

Type

Commercial › Office

YEAR

2009

A new building presents itself in the center of the New Berlin – the Science Center Medical Technology at Potsdamer Platz. The new building is the representative office in the capital city for the medical technology company Otto Bock HealthCare GmbH. The building owners OttoBock, the team of Gnädinger Architects and the media designers Art+Com developed this unique public stage for the topic of movement, which is the first of it's kind in the world. An exhibition invites visitors to "discover what moves us".Starting from the idea of human muscle fibers, the Berlin architectural firm Gnädinger was assigned the task of creating an amorphous, abstract façade, which wraps dynamically around the six-storey, reinforced concrete frame, encompassing around 1,000 square meters of floor space. The architectural design was intended to bring high-tech and nature together in a harmonious manner. The organically-formed, white exterior buckled bands encircle the rounded body of the building, based on the model of human muscle fibers, a metaphor for the simulation of complex biological processes and structures. The outer shell, an expressive aluminum and glass façade, is unusual for the city of Berlin, and provides a kind of acupuncture of new architecture amongst Berlin's traditional stone buildings and glassy modernism. In the immediate vicinity of buildings by architects ranging from Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Helmut Jahn, Hans Kollhoff to gmp, this compact structure demonstrates a confident independence.The Science Center Medical Technology responds to the context of the city's stone buildings and their serially repetitive stylistic devices with a new sensual, individualistic quality. With its complex, flowing forms based on freeform curves (splines), a new vibrancy is created, which goes beyond the already well-known standard of the tediously serial. The building therefore takes up this conceptual game in order to rediscover sensuality in the contemporary implementation of ornament in architecture.