MCI Campus

First of all, the monotonous planar north facade was broken up and replaced by a composition of various volumes that are staggered in different heights and depths. Essentially, the south facade with its concave gesture that creates a public square is retained, but is, equally clearly, reshaped. Here, too, certain areas (mostly lecture halls and seminar rooms) are combined in programme boxes that project externally. These projections give the facade a certain liveliness in the form of shelving used for similar functions. The earlier similarities to a horizontally dominated, layered “office façade” are neutralised by the building’s new physiognomy towards the forecourt, instead, using

the image of three-dimensional stage wall, the interaction between outdoor and indoor space is even more clearly strengthened . On the east and west the volume remains incised, creating significant “view funnels” and in this way it interacts with its immediate surroundings. The forecourt to Kaiser-Jäger-Straße, in particular, is enhanced, as, apart from the deliveries area, the original ancillary functions were eliminated. Instead, a street space that is flanked by a trellis expands on the site like a kind of green bay, creating an attractive additional entrance or an approach drive for taxis or similar.

The positioning of the functional areas also contributes to clear orientation. Most of the lecture halls and seminar rooms are accommodated in the southern wing and face towards the forecourt. Through the way they project out of the facade plane the program boxes deliberately position their contents in public space. In this way the densely used internal areas interact virtually with public outdoor space in such a way that from the square one experiences the south facade as an extended, vertically self-generating, densely occupied “plane of the square“. The square itself, too, is designed to allow large gatherings or events to be held place there. Just imagine how the opened facades of the Audimax (Aula Maxima), which is directly on the level of the square, prolong the space of the square

into the interior of the building and simply eliminate the boundaries between inside and outside! With the cafeteria things are similar, with its glass fronts open and the threshold space of the canopy room it is made de facto into a general public area. The foyer becomes the central middle and a link between all the areas in the interior. A landscape of seating steps made here develops upwards in a vertical dramaturgy with the circulation systems that lead further. By opening the Audimax into this middle, and with the two lecture halls on the west side, which can be opened, at ground floor level an extensive zone develops which be used entirely, can also be seen into from outside, and corresponds with the MCI’s activities in public space.