Building sexy cars, or any other volume produced product, is one thing. A lot of time and effort can be spent polishing every aspect of the object before it goes into production. But creating a sexy building, a one-off masterpiece is, as every architect knows, another thing altogether!
Porsche certainly design and make beautiful and refined cars. To celebrate and show them off in style, it has also commissioned a very special building in its new pavilion at the Autostadt in Wolfsburg. When the company became part of the VW Group it needed a bold and exciting presence alongside the pavilions of Audi, Bentley, Bugatti and Lamborghini. This pavilion by
Henn Architecten gives the brand its due.
The building captures the spirit of Porsche with its sweeping curves and its impressive cantilevered roof made possible by its light-weight monocoque construction. It looks fast! Henn Architecten, used a monocoque structure, a type of construction common in transport vehicles such as planes, ships and cars where the need to minimise weight is important. In fact, the ribs of the structure were prefabricated in a shipyard in Stralsund and assembled on site with 620 stainless steel sheets welded insitu to form the skin.
The landscape was designed by
WES landscape architects, and the exhibition by
hg merz.
