In the so-called suburban area at the gas boiler in Stuttgart, on a typical radial highway of the big city, the new headquarter of an online wine shop has been established. Three previously separate companies were merged at this location. In addition to the classic wine wholesale business and a wine agency, the online business branch, which was created a few years ago, played the most important role in the planning. Therefore, the basic questions were on the one hand how something virtual can be physically experienced and on the other hand how an added value can be created for the customers and the company.
Surrounded by different-sized commercial buildings, car dealers, power stations and city railway lines, it reflects the typical periphery of a large city. The heterogeneous environment appears faceless, scaleless and meaningless - a non-place. Therefore, the challenge was to counter the whole thing and formulate a clear commitment to the existing environment.
The answer to the environment was visual silence, clarity and reducing the building to the essentials. This attitude was consistently continued both indoors and outdoors. The clear cubic shape of the building, with square window openings developed specifically from the interior, creates a deliberately not to scale appearance. Materials, colours, openings, and construction elements were reduced to the minimum in order to focus absolutely on the product wine and the company.
In the interior, the visual relationships between the rooms within the building are created by means of specifically positioned openings. Visitors are given a glimpse of offices, storage areas, and the packing station. The square windows in the façade in particular frame the surrounding landscape like postcard motifs.
Prefabricated concrete elements in sandwich construction were chosen for the building shell, as the storage of wine requires a certain temperature window on the one hand, and temperature fluctuations must be slow on the other hand in order not to endanger the quality of the product. This was made possible by a very large area of concrete surfaces and wall thicknesses, which react very sluggishly to rapid temperature fluctuations. This made it possible to eliminate the need for technical cooling combined with high energy input.
The result is a building that meets the basic functional requirements for logistics, offices, and storage for the company and can also be operated economically. In addition, a location with special atmospheric qualities has been created, as value has been placed on room dramaturgy, poetry, special visual axes, conception in materiality and colour, furnishing and art. The object has thus defined a new place.
