Outline Concept
“Our design strategy is threefold:

1. To design a sustainable building with a high standard of comfort that requires minimum energy use and is environmentally friendly.
2. To respect the existing Grossmarkthalle both as a historical monument and as a material structure.
3. To design an architecture with a contemporary monumentality: a strong expression of wholeness and pluriformity at the same time.
   

For this we developed a design strategy that can absorb the old, but also extend the old to become new and innovative. Our design methodology is based on a concept of variable modulation: all architectural types that are needed in this program (halls, towers, slabs, etc.) can be made into a family of continuous relations.

Beginning with the Grossmarkthalle, our approach was to treat it as a structure that can be continued in both directions, North and South to facilitate a dense program of office slabs with glass atriums in between. This same structure was then varied in the vertical direction to transform the typology of ribbed vaults into either the smoothly curved roof of a large hall or a smooth parabolic tower.

This type of tower does not require any columns. All loads are transferred downwards through both the tripod core and the structural skin.

The uniformity of the concept is strengthened by the uniformity of the skin: a steel honeycomb structure filled with large glass panels at the outer skin and a second glass skin on the interior ensuring natural ventilation in between.”