Zaha Hadid Architects’ design for a ‘nerve centre’ at the heart of BMW’s Leipzig factory complex was praised for spearheading a new architecture for the automobile industry when it was completed in 2005. Connecting a trio of car manufacturing halls, the Central Building was conceived as an open, city-like space where public, professional and production activities converge, and where the social and spatial hierarchies of the traditional workplace are broken down.
Early sketches drawn by Hadid in November 2001 show how expressions of connection and flow were integral to the design from the outset. They built on prior explorations of multilinearity in the Museum of Islamic Art (1997, unrealised) and MAXXI (1998-2009), transposing its potential for the specific conditions presented by an industrial organisation of over 5000 employees. The sketches’ depictions of intersecting routes and layered platforms were developed by the project team through folded paper models and vector diagrams of the site’s latent dynamics, from which the building’s footprint and configuration gradually emerged.
The built result is an immense landscape of cast-in-place concrete. Blending the building’s programmes and personnel, its terraced offices, vehicle auditing sites, visitor areas and staff facilities are traversed by a network of assembly lines, with crossover noise carefully mitigated. The scheme, which also extends to a 4100-space carpark, won ZHA a host of accolades including the German Architecture Prize and a RIBA Award.
Design
Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher
Project Architect
Jim Heverin and Lars Teichmann
Project Team
Matthias Frei, Jan Huebener, Annette Bresinsky, Manuela Gatto, Fabian Hecker, Cornelius Schlotthauer, Wolfgang Sunder, Anneka Wegener, Markus Planteu, Robert Neumayr, Christina Beaumont, Achim Gergen, Caroline Anderson
Design Team
Lars Teichmann, Eva Pfannes, Kenneth Bostock, Stephane Hof, Djordje Stojanovic, Leyre Villoria, Liam Young, Christiane Fashek, Manuela Gatto, Tina Gregoric, Cesare Griffa, Yasha Jacob Grobman, Filippo Innocenti, Zetta Kotsioni, Debora Laub, Sarah Manning, Maurizio Meossi, Robert Sedlak, Niki Neerpasch, Eric Tong and Tiago Correia
