Interior: BMW Central Building

Interior: BMW Central Building. From a pool of 25 international architects, the BMW jury chose the very innovative design of Zaha Hadid for the final piece of the BMW plant in Leipzig Germany. The BMW Central building is a 270,000 square feet (25,000 m²) foot facility that makes up only 250,000 square feet (23,000 m²)of the 540-acre (2.2 km²) campus. Serving 5,500 employees, the building functions as the most important piece of the factory as it connects the three production sheds.

Interior: BMW Central Building (Photography © Hélène Binet)

The offices, meeting rooms, and public relations facilities are all inhabited by these elevated conveyors, which creates an interesting relationship between the employees, the cars and the public. Not only is the Central Building an office building and public relations epicenter for the factory, it is also a very important piece of the production process at the factory. The facade is clad in the simple materials of corregated metal, channel glass, and glass curtain walls.

BMW Central Building Concept

The organisation of the building exploits the obvious sequence of front to back for the phasing of public/busy to more withdrawn/quiet activities. The façade envelope is pulled in under a large diagonally projecting top floor. Here the car drop-off swoops underneath letting off visitors into the glazed public lobby.

Interior: BMW Central Building (Photography © Roland Halbe)

The primary organising strategy is the scissor-section that connects ground floor and first floor into a continuous field. Two sequences of terraced plates – like giant staircases – step up from north to south and from south to north. One commences close to the public lobby passing by/overlooking the forum to reach the first floor in the middle of the building.

Interior: BMW Central Building (Photography © Roland Halbe)

The other cascade starts with the cafeteria at the south end moving up to meet the first cascade then moving all the way up to the space projecting over the entrance. The two cascading sequences capture a long connective void between them. At the bottom of this void is the auditing area as a central focus of everybody’s attention. Above the void the half-finished cars are moving along their tracks between the various surrounding production units open to view.

Interior: BMW Central Building (Photography © Werner Huthmacher)

PROGRAM         : Offices and technical spaces for car manufacturing plant

CLIENT               : BMW AG
                                 Triebstrasse 14
                                 80993 München
                                 Germany

SIZE                      : 25000 m²

ARCHITECT       : ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: http://www.zaha-hadid.com/offices-and-towers/bmw-central-building