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BMW Plant Leipzig, Central Building

Leipzig,Germany
Zaha Hadid Architects

Zaha Hadid provides the connective tissue for a BMW complex by designing a central building that brings people and cars together


Photo © Roland Halbe
   

By Raul A. Barreneche

Architects can’t shake their fascination with industrial buildings. Icons of functionalism such as Fiat’s Lingotto factory in Turin, the work of engineer G. Matté Truco (1926), and Peter Behren’s AEG turbine factory in Berlin (1910), to name two relics of another era, still loom large in the imaginations of architects romanced by the buildings of manufacturing. But in our postindustrial, information-driven society, few factories manage to create inspired architecture from the exigencies of the assembly line.

In 2002, the German auto giant BMW invested in a high-profile competition to design a Central Building at its factory on the outskirts of Leipzig, a $1.55 billion complex where 5,000 employees can produce up to 650 of BMW’s 3-Series sports sedans daily. From a field of 25 international architects, the company picked Pritzker laureate Zaha Hadid, whose sophisticated design turned conventions of factory design on their ear. Blue-collar factory workers and white-collar managers commingle in a fluid matrix of automotive production and administration. Unfinished auto bodies on their way to the assembly line parade silently on cagelike conveyor belts suspended above workers lunching in the corporate canteen or laboring in their cubicles. “Our idea was always to challenge the typology,” says Hadid. “It took tremendous chutzpah for BMW to allow us to do this project.”

Though Hadid purports to shatter typologies, her building has no real precedent. It functions as a centralized node connecting three production buildings, designed by BMW’s own real estate and facility management group and completed in 2004, each of which contains a distinct segment of the assembly sequence: the fabrication of raw auto bodies (645,000 square feet), the paint shop (270,000 square feet), and finally the vast assembly hall (1,075,000 square feet), where painted shells are fitted out and released as finished luxury vehicles. well.

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the People

Owner
BMW

Architect
Zaha Hadid Architects
Studio 9, 10 Bowling Green Lane
London EC1 R OBQ - U.K.
Tel 0044.20.7253 5147, Fax 0044.20.7251 8322
www.zaha-hadid.com

Design:
Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher

Project Architects:
Jim Heverin / Lars Teichmann

Design team:
Lars Teichmann, Eva Pfannes, Kenneth Bostock, Stephane Hof, Djordje Stojanovic, Leyre Villoria, Liam Young, Christiane Fashek, Manuela Gatto, Tina Gregoric, Cesare Griffa, Yasha Jacob Grobman, Filippo Innocenti, Zetta Kotsioni, Debora Laub, Sarah Manning, Maurizio Meossi, Robert Sedlak, Niki Neerpasch, Eric Tong

Project team:
Lars Teichman, Jim Heverin, Jan Huebener, Matthias Frei, Cornelius Schlotthauer, Fabian Hecker, Wolfgang Sunder, Manuela Gatto, Anette Bresinsky, Anneka Wegener, Achim Gergen, Robert Neumayr, Christina Beaumont, Caroline Anderson

Landscape Architects
Gross. Max.
6 Waterloo Place
Edinburgh UK eH1 3EG
t . +44 (0)131 556 9111
f . +44 (0)131 556 9333
www.grossmax.com

Project Architect:
Daniel Reiser

Engineer(s)
Structural/Services:
AGP Arge Gesamtplanung
IFB Stuttgart
Schwieberdinger Str. 5
70435 Stuttgart
Germany
+49 711 1364-0
+49 711 1364-0
Frank Steller (Structure) / Helmut Kellner (Services)

Anthony Hunt Associates
3-11 Pine Street
London EC1R 0JH
U.K.020
78379029
020 7837 9028
lpostawa@aha-london.co.uk
Les Postawa (Space-Frame Structure)

Acoustincs:
PMI
Ottostrasse 94
85521 Ottobrunn
Germany
+49 89 606069-0
+49 89 602045
pmi-ing.de
Peter Mutard

Civil Engineer:
AGP Arge Gesamtplanung
WPW Ingenieure
Hochstrasse 61
66115 Saarbruecken
Germany
Rolf Petzold / Volker Eisenbeis
+49 681 9920-104
+49 681 9920-272
wpw.de

Consultat(s)
Cost Consultant + Coordination:
AGP Arge Gesamtplanung
IFB Berlin
Spichernstrasse 24
10777 Berlin
Germany

Lighting:
Equation Lighting
41 Pall Mall Deposit
124-128 Barlby Road
London W10 6BL - U.K.
020 7565 0565
020 7565 0566
mail@equationlighting.com
Mark Hensman

Main Contractor
Arge Rohbau
OBAG / Wolf&Mueller GmbH Schwieberdinger Straße 107
70435 Stuttgart
Germany
+49 711 8204-0
+49 711 8204-335
wolff-mueller.de
Herr Pech/ Herr Willuhn

Photographer
Roland Halbe Fotografie
Böheimstr. 45
D 70199 Stuttgart
tel  +49 711 6074073
fax  +49 711 6074178
www.rolandhalbe.de

the Products

Subcontractors
Steel works:
Max Bögl Bauunternehmung GmbH & Co. KG
PO box 11 20
92301 Neumarkt
Germany
+49 9181 909-712
+49 (9181) 909-87712
info@max-boegl.de
Herr Hier, Public Relations Department

Fit-Out + Interior glass:
Jaeger Akustik GmbH + Co KG Leipzig
Baumeisterallee 32-36
04442 Zwenkau
Germany
+ 49 34203 584-0
+ 49 34203 584-20
Herr Weinrich

Façade:
Radeburger Fensterbau/
Schneider Fertigbau
Rechenberger 7-9
74597 Stimpfach /Württ.
Germany
+49 7967 151-0
+49 7967 151-158
schneider-fertigbau.de
Herr Bayer
 
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