The search for good industrial architecture (the whole world over, in fact) seems much like a desperate attempt to find a needle in a haystack. No matter to which corner of the republic one goes in search of a good example, in almost every industrial or commercial area you are bombarded with the unimaginative juxtaposition of standardised system halls, constructed from composite panels or massive prefabricated elements. The facades of these production buildings and warehouses, with their added office sections, either come across as monotonous and boring or excessively loud and jarring. And as for whether they respond to the question of architectural quality incorrectly or not at all, one might ask if such a question ever even came up. Even the industrial area just outside the town of Neuenburg am Rhein, near the Karlsruhe-Basel Highway 5, is no exception - at first glance. But if you nevertheless make the effort to continue on your journey to the farthest corner of the anarchistic planting of construction sites, you will stumble at the end of this road upon two almost identical buildings, a twin attempt to combat the chaos of such a jumbled mix of industrial buildings with a touch of class, a clear style and steadfast order. Both halls bear the signature of the Milanese architect and designer Antonio Citterio, who constructed the Vitra Logistics and Production Centre in two stages, all the while remaining true to his trademark in his planning of the complex: reduction that focuses exclusively on function – whether it is in the buildings he designs or the products he manufactures.
Just as consistently as Citterio follows his creative path, Rolf Fehlbaum, owner of Vitra, perseveres in his penchant for writing another chapter of architectural history with every physical extension of his business. There was therefore no question when it came to this production facility, so far away from the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, not to farm out the project to some planner but instead to commission an architect of rank and name here too. As opposed to the contemporary architecture gathered together on the Vitra Campus, where the buildings of the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, the Californian Frank Gehry, the Japanese designers Tadao Ando, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (both from SAANA), the Portuguese Alvaro Siza and the Swiss designers Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are strung together, the two halls in the dreary industrial area of Neuenburg, completed 16 years apart, basically lead a wallflower existence. An unjustly so, since already the first of Citterio's halls, purchased in 1992, places the Vitra corporate image in direct relation with its products: The shiny aluminium sandwich panels of the almost 6,000 square metre large "hangars" are made of a material from which Vitra also manufactures chairs and furniture. With the massive V-wood pillars that support the far overhanging awning, Citterio pays homage to the surrounding barns and farms that give this rural town its characteristic look. But unlike in a gloomy Black Forest house where the roof overhangs right down to the ground, in his design not a single artificial light is needed, either on the prominent longitudinal facades of the offices or in the interior of the hall, for employees to find their way around and get their work done. Optimum use of daylight is an essential part of the design concept of both hangars, with a view to keeping power consumption at the lowest possible level. In this respect, the first section of the Vitra Logistics and Production Centre is already wholly characterised by benchmark-creating industrial architecture, an architectural approach that is moreover committed to a high utility value and for which the Italian architect followed a concept of using resources sparingly both in the construction and the operation of the building.
But what prompted Antonio Citterio to design a solitary extension, 16 years later, which is virtually a clone of the first building? Is it that he ran out of ideas? Could this copy possibly refer to a secret master plan? Did Vitra have no desire to extend its architectural experimentation beyond the campus? None of these speculations is true, of course – Citterio's reason for transferring both the shape and the design principle of the older building onto the almost twice as large new construction lay in the fact that the core of the rational modular system had been preserved and that an ensemble of two identical, clearly structured buildings would stand up against the surrounding patchwork architecture in a more lasting way than simply adding another powerful standalone structure would – no matter how convincing a statement it made. Moreover, the repetition of an identical building structure provided an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and added the benefit of 16 years of operational experience gained from the first building, as well as that of the technological advances available today in construction products and elements.
The new design was based on an analysis of the structural, energy related and operational characteristics of the older warehouse, with the improved new guidelines laid out in the specifications. In essence it calls for an optimised working environment - carried by a concept of flexible space as well as that of a building technique that is aligned with the use of renewable energy. Under-floor heating warms the interior. To this end, a total of 36km of pipelines were laid in floor slabs that are well insulated from the ground. While in the older building only 100 mm of mineral wool under the sheet zinc roof covering conserved the heat in the building, Citterio added another 60 millimetres to this for the new lightweight metal roof. The sandwich panels of the outer walls, insulated with rigid foam, also naturally achieve significantly better U-values. On hot summer days, the 16 overhead lighting strips, each 35 metres long, cause an uncomfortable build-up of heat very quickly, which is counteracted by automated openings in the facade glazing. A 85-kW heat pump serves as heat source. This is fed with about 15°C warm layers of subterranean water from the Upper Rhine Valley, for which a suction and injection well reaches down to a depth of 26 metres.
Electricity for the heating pump comes from a photovoltaic installation on the roof. It doesn't supply the heating system directly, but through means of an annual feed of about 112,000 kWh into the grid. The electricity output is quite close to the power consumption of the heat pump, or similar to the electricity requirement of 25 single-family houses. Despite its allocation, the photovoltaic module, ensconced in the roof sealing, saves approximately 60 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. For its actual electricity consumption, Vitra buys green electricity from hydropower. This conforms to the 1993 guidelines formulated by the company for environmentally responsible behaviour for all service locations - and thus also for the better half's older counterpart.
Compared with the old hall, the energy savings are considerable - the electricity consumption of the twice as large new building is 15 to 20 percent lower, which is partly due to the optimal use of daylight, and partly to the C-Bus lighting control concept. This technology allows both the desired programmable, automatic control of lighting with time and group scenarios and individual switching and dimming of each light by hand. Overall light allocation is controlled with sensors that coordinate the energy-saving fluorescent light with incidental light. The energy requirements for heating have been particularly radically reduced - while in the older building the heating system burned approximately 40,000 cubic metres of gas in the first three months of 2009, the new building used just 6,000 cubic metres during the same period, due to the heat pump and better insulation of the shell. And that despite the fact that it has double the floor space and an increase of 1,5m in ceiling height, taking the interior space up to more than eight metres in height.
The expansion of the usable inside height creates significantly more storage space on the total floor space of approximately 12,000 square metres. Use of the ground floor of the new hall is highly flexible, due to an enlarged 25-metre column grid. That the two hangars are not directly linked is not a disadvantage – firstly the functions and production processes are split cleanly between both buildings, and secondly a suspended, automatically controlled container shuttle between the ramps of the two buildings allows the exchange of goods.
In considering the details, Antonio Citterio has copied the building's predecessor only externally, while the core has been perfected. The twin, born 16 years later, shows that his older brother is not merely a survivor of an outdated generation, but rather one of those timeless, versatile species that ages only barely perceptibly. All the same, the operational experience gained from the original building over the course of 16 years has turned out to be so overwhelmingly favourable that an outwardly unchanged extension could not raise any criticism – emphasising once more the quality of Antonio Citterio's industrial architecture. The improvements in energy efficiency, the optimised use of lighting and the increase in available space therefore in no way detracts from its predecessor, but rather goes to show how much potential is inherent in high quality industrial architecture. Unlike many of the surrounding prêt-à-porter system halls, Vitra's new "old" logistics and production centre shows that existing resources can be put to good use. It is more than just a tribute to sustainability.
Klaus Siegele
