advanced building skins 14 | 15 June 2012 - lamp.tugraz.at - Graz ...

Advanced Building Skins
2 The Creative Potential of Plastic Materials – The Oskar-von-Miller Tower
The creative potential of plastic materials is dominated by four significant items: individuality,
formability, transparency or transmission and finally the size. All these items characterize the skin of a
building and are completely responsible for the architectural design of the Oskar-von-Miller-Tower in
Munich, the new sign of the Technical University Munich in Garching.
Figure 1: model Oskar-von-Miller-Tower Figure 2: realized facade
As the existing tower had to be removed a new one was built in the entrance of the campus Garching.
In the northern entrance to Munich it has the direct neighbourship to the second symbol of modern
architecture with plastic materials in Munich the Allianz Arena and stands into the tradition to the
Olympic stadium in Munich from 1972 as the used material was the same: PLEXIGLAS ® . So for the
material itself the building stands for the new generation of PLEXIGLAS ® in the contemporary
architecture. The tower as the new emblem of this innovative university site is 52m high up to the end
of the cladding and the architectural demands for the façade material were very complex. It should be
the translation of the idea of a dancing ballerina: You see the elegance and beauty of the form and the
skin however in the same moment you see the strength, power and “making of” of the structural
design under the shiny and mystical clothes of the façade. In detail in relation to the geometry of the
building every façade element has another oval geometry and had to be so long as possible in order to
create a nearless jointless façade. The material should be on the one hand translucent as possible for
shining through the steel and concrete substructure in daylight and on the other hand nevertheless it
had to be opaque as possible for LED projection and lighting by night. These architectural demands
were only solved by the significant items of a plastic material.
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