Ribs and Spine: an attempt to insert a very large building into an urban context while retaining human scale.

Lufthansa's headquarters in Frankfurt am Main is an attempt to break down a very large building into human and environmentally comprehensible parts. Although the site is more urban and dense than the one of Niels Torp's BA headquarters in the grey suburban rim of London near Heathrow (AR August 1998), the two have a good deal in common.

In both cases, the aim has been to make a very big building that caters for large numbers of people creating spaces where individuals have a sense of place and location. Both have plans that are dissected into rib skeletons so that they have a large surface area to volume ratio. At Heathrow, the strategy allows office workers splendid views of surrounding parkland.

In Frankfurt, the parti is used to create glazed courtyards that act as noise and pollution buffers. They permit the offices to have openable windows at every workplace. Orientation of the courts allows sunlight sometimes at almost every desk. And the plan allows the 4500 inhabitants to be grouped in clusters of 30 to 40 individuals working in teams.

Connecting zones allow larger organizational groups to be set up, and ribs of the plan are organized along a thin street-spine, carefully articulated with curved elements to make it seem less daunting than its tall thin volume suggests.

Up on the top (fifth and sixth) floors are conference rooms which overlook the city and its airport through the concrete and glass shell roof. And there is a posh restaurant up there too--this building is much more jolly than a normal company headquarters. It should be finished in 2004.

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Ingenhoven, Overdiek & Partner, Dusseldorf