Startblock B2 – Campus Founder Centre for Cottbus and Region

Lusatia was long dom­i­nated by lignite mining. Major changes came with the demise of the GDR in 1990, and aban­don­ing coal now sees the region faced with its next great chal­lenge. Struc­tural change tends to lead to a great many people losing their jobs some­where along the line. “Re-in­vent your­self Lusatia” is ac­cord­ingly the watch­word of the day. A new founder centre called Start­block B2 has been es­tab­lished in Cottbus that creates a link between the local uni­ver­sity, the town itself, and its start-up com­mu­nity, which has ac­quired new premises in the build­ing. The centre was de­signed by the ar­chi­tect Ludwig He­im­bach in con­junc­tion with Bernd Huck­riede and Jens Brinkmann I United Ar­chitek­tur.

The federal state of Bran­den­burg, to which Cottbus belongs, has gen­er­ously backed the project with re­sources from the Eu­ro­pean Re­gional De­vel­op­ment Fund. The new build­ing stands at the en­trance to the Bran­den­burg Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­sity campus, the other side of which has, since 2004, been graced by a further out­stand­ing work of ar­chi­tec­ture. This is the In­for­ma­tion, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Media Centre (IKMZ), for which the Herzog & de Meuron prac­tice has won the Great Nike awarded by the Fed­er­a­tion of German Ar­chi­tects (BDA) amongst other prizes. Start­block B2 is intent on bring­ing the public and those found­ing com­pa­nies to­gether through its wide range of uses.

The ground floor houses a mul­ti­func­tional foyer com­plete with coffee bar, lounge and work­sta­tions along with tiered seating for in­for­mal pre­sen­ta­tions and an open-plan work­shop (FabLab); in short, it is the com­mu­ni­ca­tional heart of the build­ing. The office spaces provide all that today’s new world of work sets store by. A variety of spatial con­fig­u­ra­tions fa­cil­i­tate co-work­ing in a land­scaped setting in tandem with the privacy of in­di­vid­ual offices. All offices have access to com­mu­nal spaces in which to con­verse, drink tea and chill out. Sup­ple­ment­ing such fa­cil­i­ties are a spa­cious con­fer­ence room with ad­join­ing roof terrace, nat­u­rally lit work­shops and a work­shop court­yard that doubles up as an open-air cinema.

The hy­brid-tim­ber struc­tur­ing, op­ti­mised design en­gi­neer­ing and sus­tain­able power systems and ma­te­ri­als that define the build­ing also demon­strate a will to meet future demands re­gard­ing the earth’s climate. The un­der­ly­ing concept focuses upon non-tech­ni­cal so­lu­tions such as manual night-time ven­ti­la­tion, shading and ge­ot­her­mal com­po­nent ac­ti­va­tion. The hybrid method of con­struc­tion boasts added light­ness towards the outside: a re­in­forced con­crete shell is en­closed by a tim­ber-frame façade fitted with textile shading el­e­ments. The two colours used for semi-translu­cent textile sails held fast by steel frames play a large part in how graph­i­cally well-de­fined the build­ing looks.

The concept in­form­ing the core and shell is imbued with the char­ac­ter of a work­shop. As a metaphor for ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and rebirth, the ar­chi­tec­ture mirrors both its own func­tion and the search for a new iden­tity the Lusatia region is itself un­der­go­ing. The rooms inside are notable for their rough con­crete fin­ishes and for visible ser­vices that also make for the great­est pos­si­ble flex­i­bil­ity in the event of spaces within the con­crete skele­ton being re­con­fig­ured. Colour has a sig­nif­i­cant role to play inside the build­ing in jux­ta­po­si­tion to the rough-faced ma­te­ri­als em­ployed. The in­te­rior palette takes its cue from the ex­te­rior façade, op­er­at­ing with shades of the light silver and red that pre­dom­i­nate there.

The handles se­lected blend in seam­lessly with the as­sid­u­ously con­ceived bichrome scheme adopted for the build­ing’s ma­te­ri­als. In a de­par­ture from their usual prac­tice of choos­ing the FSB 1005 model for their pro­jects, the ar­chi­tects had re­course on this oc­ca­sion to FSB 1268, then a brand-new lever-han­dle series. They wanted a model with a return to door so as to ensure that the barrier freedom spec­i­fied would also extend to the handles. “The return was not to appear to have been somehow ‘stuck on’ but was to form a co­he­sive part of the in­trin­sic overall design,” Ludwig He­im­bach ex­plains. “1268 achieves this to per­fec­tion.”