Chamber of Commerce

House in the House, Hamburg, 2003

INTENTION

The plane structure, its surface of the quality of precious wooden furniture, is mounted in the hall's upper gallery, preserving the six-sided room structure. Peculiar interstices are formed across the floors: A mobile is shaped, largely covering itself up through sliding scales on top and bottom (optidynamical structure). Each layer hides itself behind others of its equals, the structure diminishes itself throughout the room.

CONCEPT

Due to the upper floor’s connections, needed for exhibition operations, boundary points with the inventory emerge, being their only contact points. At those points of contact, the mobile, statically perfect in proportion, is mounted loosely in the hall. Thereby the shape of an infinite looking, hall-trespassing floor of an undissected surface appears – involving a maximum of flexibility for its utilization, speaking of public usage of hall I. Yet the four binding points on the upper level achieve a maximal flexibility in their extent, providing ideal means of escape. In the hall’s depth, another level (1.ZG) is notched in addition to the three requested ones. Its ceiling edge is almost at eye level, giving a hardly perceivable view of the ceiling’s bottom. None of the facilities in that area, one on top of the other, – internet zone, private rooms, pantry/ WC – need an excessive height (2,50m clear space distance). By cause of this conscious design, the new structure’s projection area mathematically decreases, while its distance to the walls increases: the old hall’s overall appearance stays more impressive than if the given space, which was dispensed from monumental preservation orders, were fully exploited.