Under the sign of the bucket: New building for Sto
Photo: ©Sto SE & Co KGaA / Martin Baitinger, Böblingen
The new reception and office buildings erected by Sto constitute one of the few projects out in the countryside to gain a Certificate in Platinum from the DGNB, the German Sustainable Building Council. The commission for their design was awarded directly without any previous competition – another aspect that seldom applies to buildings awarded a DGNB certificate.
The inauguration of the structures designed by ORANGE BLU (a merging of Wilford Schupp Architects and ZSP Architects | Peter Vorbeck) marked completion of a further milestone in the architects' master plan. The reception building, which in shape and colour recalls the Sto trademark yellow bucket, now forms the focal point of the company grounds. Provided a generously-sized foyer on the ground floor and several meeting rooms and a roof terrace further up, the reception building leads over to its companion piece, a three-storey, 60-metre-long building accommodating a data centre and office space for up to 150 employees. Both buildings have a reinforced concrete structure and feature a number of innovations from Sto's product range. These include newly-developed ceiling elements deployed not only for acoustic purposes but also heating and cooling, and biaxially curvable StoVentec panels, which have been found extensive use in the project. The buildings' energy concept, which seeks to substantially minimise energy requirements by both passive and active means, played a large role in securing DGNB's platinum certification. The concept includes a rooftop solar array with an annual output of 26,400 kilowatt hours, and also features a non-bearing, back-ventilated facade layer mounted to the southern façade and complemented with invisibly-fixed solar modules that deliver a further output of 15,800 kilowatt hours a year. Black glass panels were installed on the other three facades to create a homogeneous impression. A turbine powered by water from the nearby Ehrenbach stream is a further source of energy.
The inauguration of the structures designed by ORANGE BLU (a merging of Wilford Schupp Architects and ZSP Architects | Peter Vorbeck) marked completion of a further milestone in the architects' master plan. The reception building, which in shape and colour recalls the Sto trademark yellow bucket, now forms the focal point of the company grounds. Provided a generously-sized foyer on the ground floor and several meeting rooms and a roof terrace further up, the reception building leads over to its companion piece, a three-storey, 60-metre-long building accommodating a data centre and office space for up to 150 employees. Both buildings have a reinforced concrete structure and feature a number of innovations from Sto's product range. These include newly-developed ceiling elements deployed not only for acoustic purposes but also heating and cooling, and biaxially curvable StoVentec panels, which have been found extensive use in the project. The buildings' energy concept, which seeks to substantially minimise energy requirements by both passive and active means, played a large role in securing DGNB's platinum certification. The concept includes a rooftop solar array with an annual output of 26,400 kilowatt hours, and also features a non-bearing, back-ventilated facade layer mounted to the southern façade and complemented with invisibly-fixed solar modules that deliver a further output of 15,800 kilowatt hours a year. Black glass panels were installed on the other three facades to create a homogeneous impression. A turbine powered by water from the nearby Ehrenbach stream is a further source of energy.
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