Stepping stones: an attempt to make urban architecture on a very difficult and disjointed site.

With 6000 employees worldwide, Trumpf AG is one of the great German postwar manufacturing success stories, prospering in the heavily industrialized heartland of Swabia around Stuttgart. As such, Trumpf's management has pursued a bold architectural mission that matches the company's leading edge reputation in laser technology and machine tools. In particular, it has cultivated a fruitful relationship with architects Barkow Leibinger, who have been involved in spearheading Trumpf's rapid international expansion in Germany, Switzerland, the US, and latterly in Italy, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

The Berlin-based partnership has been responsible for the masterplanning and design of an evolving Trumpf research and production campus. In 1999, it designed a manufacturing plant for laser technology at the company's headquarters in Stuttgart-Ditzingen and a year later, a Systems Technology plant was added. The new 9000[m.sup.2] Distribution and Service Centre is the third phase of the expansion plan. The results have given Trumpf an increasingly recognizable architectural image, following the model of other German corporations--for instance Vitra, Rimowa (Grimshaw) or the Ernsting family (Chipperfield), which have animated their industrial sites with notable buildings.

The latest addition to the Trumpf Campus presented the architects with their greatest challenge to date. The site is at an odd corner and borders directly on to a busy motorway, not an auspicious location for a building intended to serve as a place for welcoming clients and guests. The conundrum was resolved by astute massing and subdivision of volumes. As you walk up the gentle slope, past the administrative and research buildings from the '70s, the new building's layered structure comes into view. The landscape is marked by generously spaced steps, with each threshold highlighted by long strips of laser-cut metal plates that chronologically document the company's meteoric rise and expansion. So even before they cross this entrance platform, visitors have subconsciously absorbed some corporate history.

The lines of the steps extend into the ground floor, demarcating the three main functions of the entrance area (lobby, 200 seat auditorium and exhibition space). The resulting polygonal shapes are arranged in a strong, almost sculptural, relationship to each other. Barkow Leibinger refer metaphorically to those three ground floor volumes as 'stones'. Interrupted only by floor to ceiling window openings, their solid grey basalt facades exude a monumental yet precisely aligned verticality.

Inside, a generous longitudinal corridor connects the stones. A metal relief, cut using the most advanced Trumpf machinery, runs along the entire length of the ground floor corridor, concealing the large exhaust air ducts which service the ground floor. With its decorative yet functional spirit, this part of the building is reminiscent of a cultural institution or university. Gaps between stones are filled by a pair of reinforced-concrete cores which stabilize the two parallel office wings above. Though taking up the same basic footprint (55 X 9m), the wings are offset against each other by 11m and vary both in height and in the number of storeys. There is a striking contrast between the light, transparent horizontal structure of the office floors and the solid verticality of the stones below. Glazed, double-skinned facades on the north and south sides screen the building as much as enhance its pervading impression of lightness.

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Each of the 500[m.sup.2] office floors (four on the north and five on the south side), are open-plan, column-free spaces with only a couple of meeting rooms on each floor. Split-level offices are connected by gracefully rising staircases. Space flows fluidly, with daylight flooding in, and natural cross ventilation utilizes the open cores as thermal stacks, with passive cooling during the summer months and heat recovery during the winter.

Offices appear as calm, uncluttered spaces, but are also thoughtfully detailed and highly practical. Their economical organization arose from Barkow Leibinger's collaboration with engineering scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute and furniture manufacturer Vitra. Empirical and analytical studies were used to devise a special type of office furniture that greatly reduced individual filing space but added other features; for instance, a writing desk that can be pulled out. The understated colour scheme of grey furniture, green fabric screens and brown felt wall coverings adds to the elegant, workmanlike internal atmosphere.

This latest building consolidates Barkow Leibinger's relationship with Trumpf; the next phase of corporate campus development is eagerly awaited.

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