Innovation Quarter Lippstadt

Rinsdorf Ströcker Architekten

Products

1023
Door handle fitting

In the 1950s, the Swiss ar­chi­tect, sculp­tor and de­signer Max Bill got to­gether with Ernst Moeckel to fashion a door handle that made design history as the ‘Ulm handle’. It, in turn, prompted Jo­hannes Potente to produce the FSB 1023, which has long served as an al­ter­na­tive to the common U-shaped models.

1023
Door handle fitting

Seed-bed for ideas and their germination

The ground-plan of the In­no­va­tion Quarter in Lipp­stadt is akin to a gently curved heart. The idea behind the build­ing: bring­ing com­merce and aca­d­e­mic re­search to­gether at a single lo­ca­tion. The North-Rhine West­phalian town of Lipp­stadt near Pader­born has been home to a centre for in­no­va­tion since 2020 that in­spires and nur­tures not just com­pa­nies from the region but budding aca­d­e­mics too. The com­pe­ti­tion to design the build­ing was won in 2018 by the Rins­dorf Ströcker Ar­chi­tects (RSA) prac­tice from Lipp­stadt.

A build­ing has been erected a stone’s throw from the Hamm-Lipp­stadt Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences that “unites every­thing on one level and whose cur­va­ceous design leaves room for cre­ative ideas,” is how the ar­chi­tects for­mu­late their own cre­ative idea. As Francis Picabia once put it: “Our heads are round so our thoughts can change di­rec­tion.” It would seem to be on the cards, there­fore, that the design of the sin­gle-storey new-build venture will be greatly con­ducive to new in­sights and think­ing.

Just over 21,500 square feet of the struc­ture’s floor­space has been taken up by the Uni­ver­sity to house, amongst other things, an ur­gently needed lecture theatre along with flex­i­bly con­fig­urable areas for stu­dents wishing to think up founder ideas of their own. The op­po­site side of the heart is oc­cu­pied by com­pa­nies who have, for in­stance, rented space for their R&D de­part­ments in the IQ. The middle of the ground-plan is taken up by what has been dubbed a mar­ket­place, a central public area that pro­vides scope for meet­ings and ex­changes of a more general nature.

Architecture and Object

Marai Ströcker and Carsten Rins­dorf of Rins­dorf Ströcker Ar­chitek­ten (RSA)
Photo: © Rins­dorf Ströcker Ar­chitek­ten

“The at­mos­phere in our build­ing is founded upon a modern formal idiom and our opting for natural ma­te­ri­als,” is how RSA de­scribe their ar­chi­tec­tural ap­proach. “We aspire to define places whose spaces have com­pelling qual­i­ties. The struc­ture’s in­di­vid­u­al­ity becomes ap­par­ent – what’s novel nev­er­the­less looks fa­mil­iar.”

Innovation-inducing work environments

The in­te­rior spaces derive their iden­tity both from the unusual shape of the ground-plan and in equal measure from a fully glazed façade that bathes them in day­light. “Voids” cut into the build­ing at right angles even admit natural light into the very depths of the build­ing. They take the form of minia­ture oases of green­ery that add an in­for­mal touch to the office at­mos­phere whilst si­mul­ta­ne­ously serving as at­trac­tive outdoor spaces for users of the IQ in which to either switch off briefly or work out in the open.

The views through from one busi­ness to the next af­forded by these voids are like­wise wholly geared towards fa­cil­i­tat­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, small “ad hoc meet­ings” and the re­sul­tant syn­er­getic effects. Just how in­spi­ra­tional ex­ist­ing blue­prints and ways of think­ing can be is also ev­i­denced by the FSB 1023 handle model de­ployed in the build­ing. Jo­hannes Potente au­thored it on the basis of a handle by Max Bill and Ernst Moeckl that fa­mously came to be known as the “Ulm door handle”.

In the IQ, this lever-han­dle model is ac­com­pa­nied by a digital lock cylin­der FSB is in a po­si­tion to supply through a deal with Si­monsVoss. The latter has been a pi­o­neer­ing force in the field of keyless se­cu­rity systems and is still seen as being a front-run­ner in the tech­nol­ogy today. Its AX digital cylin­der is par­tic­u­larly user-friendly: op­er­a­tion is sim­pli­fied by an er­gonomic yet compact knob that works with both optical and acoustic signals. The great scope for com­bi­na­tion with FSB’s range of lever-han­dle sets makes this pairing an even more ap­peal­ing propo­si­tion.

Object Details

Photos: Markus Guhl

Location

Innovation Quarter Lippstadt

59557 Lipp­stadt,
Deutsch­land

Anfahrt planen

BESbswy