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An innovative vacuum-formed facade provides a sober enclosure for museum
By Russell Fortmeyer

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	The underlying steel structure and continuous grating are visible through the fiberglass membrane vacuum-sealed in place. Fans maintain internal pressure at all times. Photo: © Udo Meinel

The fetish of the neutral white box remains as popular as ever in architecture, but structural engineer Werner Sobek has now taken it further.

In his design for a shelter for a withered World War II–era crematorium on the grounds of the 1942 Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Sobek turned to the ubiquitous formal device as a way to keep architecture from upstaging the somber atmosphere of the place. But far from implementing a conventional gypsum-board box for what is now a museum called Station Z, he developed a vacuum technique that adheres the translucent polytetrafluoroethylene-coated fiberglass outer membrane to the underlying steel structure with few additional attachments.

“We wanted to achieve a simplicity through complex engineering techniques,” says Sobek, whose firm has offices in Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and New York. The project, which opened in 2005 in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, was a collaboration between Sobek and Stuttgart-based architect HG Merz. Sobek’s team sought to update traditional textile-based construction for the museum, located 22 miles north of Berlin, by taking out the sagging appearance and proliferation of fittings typically associated with tensile fabric structures. Sobek says that since only the ground-level foundations and floors of the crematorium buildings remain, it was important to him that the architecture of the museum protect the site in an aesthetically pleasing way with the least visual presence.

The membranes for the walls and ceiling were stretched onto steel grating attached to the main structural elements. In the 39-inch space that separates the interior and exterior surfaces, contractors introduced a vacuum continuously maintained by baffled radial fans located nearly 230 feet away. The vacuum seamlessly keeps the membranes in place, while a pressure regulator ensures an internal range of 0.01 to 0.23 pounds per square inch in response to fluctuating wind speeds. Minor attachment points were accommodated inside the relatively airtight structure, out of view of visitors.

The result is a clean, white plane that silhouettes the steel structure, framing the crematorium buildings’ remains in a 120-foot-by-130-foot box while acting as a muted surface for contemplation. The grating’s grid, backlit by the sun, provides visual relief and human-scaled definition to what could have been an infinite field of white. The project, which took only six months to construct, represents Sobek’s commitment to integrated design, recently profiled in his work for the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart [RECORD, November 2006, page 195].

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