Vocational School for Color and Design, Munich

The five-storey new building on Carl-Wery-Straße offers over 11,000 m² of floor space for 13 training and further education courses. The layout is complemented by specialist workshops, exhibition spaces, modern IT rooms and a two-storey sports hall located underground.

The ‘Test Pattern’ art-in-architecture project by artist Wawrzyniec Tokarski makes a striking statement right from the entrance area. Large-format stainless steel surfaces and intense colours create a powerful visual introduction.

The client’s decision to relocate the double-height sports hall to the basement levels placed high demands on the structural framework. The requirements included large spans, low dead loads and largely column-free areas both in the sports hall and on the ground floor, which houses the exhibition hall and paint shop. To meet these requirements cost-effectively, a seamless steel-concrete composite structure was developed. The structural concept combines stiffening reinforced concrete cores, wall-like beams in exposed concrete and composite slabs made of filigree elements, thereby enabling a robust, efficient and, at the same time, architecturally clear structure.