METARAUM / Heinisch.Lembach.Huber Architekten

Description

The building design takes its inspiration from the themes of the exhibition within. Architecture and exhibition thus form an inseparable unity. Across four storeys, MAHLE offers employees, customers and visitors a series of insights into the company’s work. The simple building volume forms an envelope containing a complex warren of rooms of varying proportions and ambiences, interconnected by airspaces and sightlines. The layout concept thus echoes the complicated relationships between the exhibition topics addressed. The facade already hints at some of the content presented inside: the jointing, flaring and grooving principles typical for engine construction as well as the varying finishes that can be given to metal are translated as a “technical surface” into an abstracted system of metal panels of various textures and articulation. These are arranged in a matrix of joints of differing widths. The storeys are not legible on the facade; instead, the building has the presence of a monolithic “object” in the public space.