Audiovisual Lab for the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts

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Location
Leipzig, Germany
Client
Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts
Competition
2001
Ranking
Short-listed
Program
Exhibition space, administrative offices, multimedia room, research lab

The Academy of Visual Art in Leipzig needed a new Department for Interactive Media. It was to be placed within the boundaries of the eighteenth-century building and physically integrated into the steel-and-brick structure of the existing terrace, 75’ above street level.

This award-winning design proposal combines the mandatory connection of the new volume to the street via fire stair and elevator with the formulation of a “narrative façade”.

The activities within the building are broadcasted on the projection plane of the building envelope, much like the front of medieval churches would represent the story of mankind, acting as the interface between the “enlightened” inner users and the outer local community. The façade is a highly sophisticated system that incorporates the projection screen of the theater and contains an escalator and elevator providing direct access from the street to the lab and the theater.

The program was combined and consolidated to identify three platforms within the apparently-ungovernable proliferation of functions and media, each platform a programmatic cluster that is architecturally defined and equipped for optimal performance, with different sizes, densities and opacities. The in-between vertical shafts form a wrapping light envelope that resolves the transition between the existing academy building and the new volume, and admits high quantities of daylight where desirable.