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Architects: Archwerk Generalplaner KG
- Area: 1850 m²
- Year: 2005
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Photographs:Peter Lippsmeier, Archwerk - Sascha Völzke
Text description provided by the architects. The IG Metall JAHRHUNDERTHAUS headquarters lies very close to Bochum town centre in the Westpark on Alleestrasse. The draft envisages two parallel blocks running north - south, connected by a transparent hall. The east wing contains 9 storeys and on the west side the top two floors project outwards by approximately 4.40 metres. The west wing contains 4 storeys (a 2-storey high assembly room (divisible), the catering area on the 2nd floor, and the seminar area on the 3rd floor). Access to the building is by way of a glass-roofed hall with a path from the Alleestraße (main entrance) via a steel-structured, four-level stairway to the Westpark. The difference in height of the terrain (approx. 7.00 m) is made both visible and useable in the hall by four stepped, steel platforms. The floor plan enables a number of variable uses to be made due to the combination of restaurant, foyer and assembly rooms.
On the ground floor (at Alleestrasse level) connected to the hall there is a divisible assembly room, an Internet venue, and a youth room. The office areas on the upper floors are accessed via lifts from the hall. On the 2nd floor (at the level of the Westpark, roughly + 7.00 m), in the west wing there is a catering establishment open to the public. It and its terrace face onto the Westpark and have here an additional, separate entrance.
The building is designed with flexible office use in mind and can be laid out as group offices, as a double-loaded corridor with cubicles or also as an open-plan office. The floors are easily divisible and can be leased flexibly (3.00 metre room height). The basement houses a conventional underground car park with 86 parking spaces with ramp access to Bessemerstrasse.
The exterior appearance is defined by clinker masonry with a perforated façade or, in the case of the inner side looking onto the glass-roofed hall, by an aluminium and glass facade. The perforated façade contains stove-enamelled aluminium windows. The facades of both blocks which look inwards onto the reception hall are of glass. The hall's load-bearing structure is made of steel. The roofs are flat. The glass-roofed hall has a roof composed of overlapping glass panels with a suspended, movable, textile sunshade (greenhouse-type shade netting).
