Schwäbisch Media is a media company housed in one building composed of six separate glass-walled office ‘villas’ in Ravensburg, which is the economic center of Upper Swabia, Germany. The six working groups are housed in separate glass-walled office ‘villas’, whose proportions and dimensions are based on existing urban villas, and which are disposed on the several plots so as to integrate with the surrounding historic context. At the ground floor, housing café, conference and event center, and walled gardens, the six office cubes are interconnected and joined by a transparent glazed outer membrane. This glass membrane wraps interior and exterior spaces, both imparting a singular identity to the project as well as allowing the individual buildings to be distinguished, producing an ambiguous and fluctuating spatial interpretation. The large structure is perceived as both several individual buildings, sharing a common enclosing skin, and one continuous diaphanous urban enclosure, interweaving interior and exterior spaces. For those working in the building, the smaller areas of each working unit allow a sense of place and comfort, giving a domestic character to the experience of inhabitation.

Location
Karlstraße 20
D-88212 Ravensburg
Germany

Program
Office

Size
13.800 m2

Date of design
2008-2009

Date of completion
2013

Project team
Wiel Arets, Bettina Kraus, Carsten Hilgendorf, Uta Böcker, Tobias Gehrke, Ramón Alvarez-Roa, Ole Hallier

Collaborators
Deniza Radulova, Gwendolyn Kerschbaumer, Felix Thies

Client
Schwäbischer Verlag GmbH & Co. KG

Consultants
ABT, SSF-Ingenieure AG, Müller-BBM GmbH, HL-Technik GmbH, IHG-Technik GmbH, Winter lngenieure GmbH