schulz und schulz

Description

To reduce the costs of rather expensive field tests in cloud research, the Institute for Tropospheric Research Leipzig developed a method of bringing clouds into the laboratory. This is made possible by a completely new cloud simulator which reduces the cloud to a linear particle ray. The cloud flows through a cloud simulator consisting of an up to eight meter long vertically arranged, double-walled current pipe. The pipe is positioned in the middle of a cylindrical, windowless tower which again provides a highly stable environment. As a result the formation of a cloud in a test tube allows research into the genesis and, most of all, the man-made transformation of clouds. In order to establish the architectural structure of the building, we did not choose to use the emotionalising aspect commonly associated with clouds, so we neither constructed a “cloudy” building, nor is the object in any way amorphous. On the contrary, the cloud laboratory is the visible expression of an extremely sophisticated machine whose main objective is to exert absolute control over the test tube cloud. The uniqueness of the test arrangement as regards the cloud simulator gives the building a highly individual appearance.The additional peripheral laboratories and offices, which are all situated on one level, are placed around the 16 metre tall tower in the centre. Like the symbolic typology of the building, the formal principles concerning the whole project have also been derived from the world of cloud research.