Dining and Club Rooms of the Officers' School of the German Bundeswehr in Dresden

The underlying concept of this new pavilion was to create a sensation of “sitting outdoors under a roof”. The building is divided by a foyer into two independent sections. The ground floor is glazed on all sides, with large sliding doors affording direct access to the park. Movable sunscreening to the long faces creates a changing external appearance. Daylight entering the building via roof lights accentuates distinct areas within the open-plan interior and results in changes of mood, depending on the time of day and weather conditions. The structure, which is legible both internally and externally, consists of a steel girder grid and columns set on top of a solid basement. It is braced by St Andrew’s cross elements in the façade bays and by internal concrete cores. Laid over the girder grid are laminated ribbed sheets, the length of which is equal to the width of the building. Fresh air is distributed laterally in ducts housed in the ribbed sheeting, and in the longitudinal direction via exposed conduits. A plywood louvre construction to the soffit serves to improve the acoustics. The roof is planted and drained to the outer edges. The horizontal timber façade members are fixed to the steel structure with stainless-steel pins. To ensure maximum transparency, there are no glazing sections to the vertical façade joints. Wind loading is transmitted to the steel columns behind the outer skin. The use of glass bracing fins allowed the thickness of the glazing to be reduced to a minimum.