Media Pool at the Waterloohain in Hamburg

A number of industrial buildings in Hamburg have been converted into a media pool. Some were increased in height, and the top storeys were clad with a skin of mirrored glass and polyspectrally anodized stainless steel. In one building, the concrete skeleton-frame structure was gutted and enclosed on three sides in translucent facades. A concertina-like entrance leads to a narrow staircase space 14m high, but only 1.5 m wide. The straight-flight stairs link the various offset floor levels. The form of construction – with open treads cantilevered from the side wall and flanked on the other side by a detached steel balustrade – lends the staircase a sense of transparency and a remarkable spatial complexity.