lgn2511

Inside the 2003 DuPont Benedictus Awards®; exploring
new interior design uses of architectural laminated glass

"Designed to cheer up pupils and teachers on a grey-sky day."

At the school a colour-coding technique is used to signal vertical articulation to the children: the stairwell façades are in orange laminated glass.

The Schule am Mummelsoll school for children with special needs is located in former East Berlin, in the midst of a drab, modular housing monoculture. Because many of the children suffer from physical handicaps as well (about 25 percent being in wheelchairs), they don’t get out much. For many of the more seriously handicapped children, the central environment is their parents’ home. Excursions are only possible with assistance and require great effort.

This Schule am Mummelsoll (completed in July 2002) is even more significant because, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was not required by law for mentally handicapped children to attend school, and most did not. As a consequence there were no schools for children with special needs.

The architects had two main design goals: the school needed to be a safe and functional place that serves the special needs of the children attending it. However, it also has to be "exciting and full of new things to explore", according to Almut Ernst of Grüntuch Ernst Architekten, Berlin.

The visual connections within the building help the children with orientation and group identification. Bright coloured daylight is cast into the depth of the building and submerges the interior in a polychromatic light. The architects remark that they wanted "to cheer up pupils and teachers on a grey-sky day". Loeweglas of Berlin supplied all the glass for this project.

Teachers report that whereas fear and frustration made some pupils aggressive in the past, the extensive daylight, and the feeling of openness with security achieved by the laminated glass architecture in this project has calmed the pupils down. One of the 2003 DuPont Benedictus Awards® judges said: "I imagine the kids feel that it’s fun to be at school … This project was only made possible through the use of laminated glass – the safety of the material is essential to these children."

A radical departure from the ‘bunker mentality’ of traditional embassies.
The decision of Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland (the five Nordic countries) to build their embassies in Berlin jointly was a new concept, diplomatically and politically. For architects Berger + Parkkinen Architekten of Vienna, the challenge was to ensure the sovereignty and security of the five countries represented in a single building complex (completed: 1999) while communicating an openness and trust in the interior architecture.

Tiina Parkkinen says: "The use of laminated glass made it possible to achieve high transparency, for example in the main reception area, in spite of the demanding security demands inherent in an embassy project. The use of large format bullet-resistant laminated glass in the reception and consular sections meant that we could fulfill the need for high security with the open and transparent appearance of a modern administration building."

"Once you walk inside, you’re in a different world."

The 2003 DuPont Benedictus Awards® judges said: "If you were looking for a way to create a very pleasant, light, airy internal environment, laminated glass achieves that in the best way here at the Noevir HQ...Once you walk inside, you're in a different world."

The U.S. headquarters and showrooms of Noevir, a Japanese cosmetics firm (completed in January 2002) are set in an industrial and manufacturing complex that also serves as the company’s North American distribution facility. The main design challenge for architects Space International of Los Angeles was to create a serene, spa-like atmosphere for the interior in the centre of a chaotic industrial environment.

Clear and translucent laminated glass with flat polished edges, supplied by California Glass Bending of Wilmington, California, is used at the perimeter exterior walls of the space, veiling the interior from the landscape outside. It is also used in the interior as a sound/privacy device that separates the conference room from the main showroom, and to create visual and sound privacy between the showroom and the main office/shipping space that lies beyond two layers of staggered laminated glass.

Fostering communication and visibility between people in the building
The architecture of Bang & Olufsen’s new headquarters in Struer, Denmark (completed in October 2002) aspires to a quiet and almost weightless expression through transparency. The layout of the public and common facilities, as well as placing all circulation areas along the open façades, help communication and visibility between people working in the building. There are very few doors in this building. Instead, the building is laid out in "emotional spaces with varying degrees of transparency," according Jan Sondergaard, responsible partner for the project at KHRAS Architects, Virum, Denmark.

	A glass corridor floor, from below at the B&O HQ.