Hechingen Office, Black Forest Building, German Office HQ, Architecture Images

Hechingen Studio in the Black Forest

Contemporary Building Development, Germany design by Whitaker Studio

6 Jun 2016

Hechingen Office Black Forest Building

Design: Whitaker Studio

Location: the Black Forest, Southwest Germany

Hechingen Studio

In 2010 a German advertising agency approached me to design them a low cost workplace in the Black Forest, just outside the town of Hechingen. The advertising agency stopped trading before the project was realised. However, expanding my photography business into visualisations I revisited the project recently to produce these renders of how it would have looked.

The client was keen to use shipping containers to keep costs low and needed a small office that would encourage the growth of their company. Taking inspiration from crystal growth in a science laboratory and the soaring towers of Hechingen Castle, I arranged 11 containers in this radial form. The upper containers trace the sun’s path through the sky while the lower containers provide an array of quiet working spaces that all open onto the central heart of the office.

In 2010 I spoke to Gardiner & Theobald in Berlin who had just finished working on a steel building. They knew who to buy shipping containers off in Rotterdam and the perfect metal fabricators in Hamburg. After fabrication, the modules would be transported to site where they would be bolted together, sitting on top of concrete columns rising from the foundations.

As the site was a green field the design is quite independent of the location and I have been looking for a new client to take the project forward with.