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Architects: Matteo Thun & Partners
- Area: 4000 m²
- Year: 2007
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Photographs:Jens Weber
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Electric planning: MS Consulting, Martin Scherbaum
Text description provided by the architects. Binder is one of the leading European companies in the wood industry. The clean-cut and precisely designed new executive pavilion of the Kösching wood mill to the north of Munich, Bavaria, is surrounded by warehouses: an all-glass central section (the entrance hall) and four lateral constructions, made of alternating glass and wooden panels, wedged into the former to create a clean-cut H-shaped base and two inner courtyards, two quiet, dry gardens on either side of the foyer.
The first courtyard serves reception purposes, the second is more private. Together with the entrance structure they form a transparent sequence, an axis of visibility opening onto the surrounding countryside. Another axis perpendicular to the first runs lengthways right across the central section: a sort of crossroads for the eyes, visual trajectories melding the transition between inside and outside into a seamless flow of space. Everything is set beneath a large flat roof, a big wooden sheet with powerful overhangs, projecting over the courtyards like a wide-brimmed hat.
The building programme is equally clear: administration offices and spaces for holding conferences and seminars, a single-storey office building which exploits, to the very last millimetre, the construction-perceptual properties of wood. But a very innovative kind of wood.
The entire building is actually made of BBS panels (Binder-Brettsperrholz), one of the leading products in the Binder catalogue: large and very thick (27 cm) prefabricated sheets of multi-layered structural plywood (spruce and larch) made entirely of wood, geometrically combined in the least laborious way possible to form a versatile “raw material” for building. It has excellent heat, sound and fireproof properties and does not require any extra insulation. Full-height coplanar glass panels alternate with BBS panels of the same size to form a lively façade pattern framing the surrounding landscape: transparency and material substance to create an idea of contrast.
The interiors duly follow suit, with dark shades on the surfaces and clear colours for the furniture; vice-versa, depending on the area involved, the finishes come in natural stone, felt, leather and wool, with custom-coatings for the office units. How to create a business card in the guise of architecture.
