Grüntuch Ernst

Description

Security implant on the outskirts. The police station on an industrial estate in Bernau in Brandenburg is intended to be a striking presence conveying a sense of security. A place had to be created in a featureless non-place, a place that invites town-dwellers in despite major security problems, makes it easy for them to get their bearings quickly and reduces their fear of the unknown. The extensive spatial programme is organized compactly and efficiently in a single, lucid building. The garages for the police vehicles are concentrated around a courtyard, and public and police traffic are each concentrated along one of the building’s long sides. The large building mass is reduced visually by a great deal of transparency and a bluishly shimmering patchwork of light-weight metal panels. The building now seems to float over the recessed ground floor, implanted apparently weightlessly in the dense trees around it. The public entrance façade presents itself as permeable, with a curtain of slatted glass. The police officers’ routes around the centre, around the courtyard, are short and varied. Coloured glass panels and wide shading elements give rhythm to these routes and shorten them visually. The “Barnim Protection Area” now radiates great calm and great presence, defining an unmistakable place with its changing materials and scales.