HENN designed the new Innovation Centre at Merck's main factory and corporate headquarters in Darmstadt. The building complex on Frankfurter Strasse chalks up an important milestone in the development of the company's site and projects the image of a forward-thinking and cosmopolitan heart of a globally active company.
Following the provisions of the masterplan for the whole site, which was also designed by HENN, the new building occupies a prominent position between two listed company buildings. In front of its entirely glazed main facade, a spacious public square opens out, extending across Frankfurter Strasse and incorporating the modular structure of the planned visitor centre to the east.
The two-part building complex is due to be completed in 2017 and will cover around 22,000 square metres in total. It consists of the five-storey Innovation Centre and a rear-facing restaurant building, which can accommodate 1,000 diners on its two upper storeys and offers a roof terrace and a basement food court. The consistent facade design makes the two buildings immediately recognisable as parts of a single unit. In the middle of the ensemble formed by the glazed buildings and along the line of the former main works access road is a two-flight open staircase with a landing that joins the pair of buildings together.
About 300 people work in the Innovation Centre, which has a room schedule designed to meet the requirements of temporary teams engaged on interdisciplinary projects. The reception area, which is high enough to continue over a few storeys, opens to the new Emanuel-Merck Platz and transitions seamlessly into a lounge area and a café. On the first floor are a multimedia library, a lounge and the co-creation area. The floors in the other above-ground storeys are laid out as open zones with fluid transitions between areas for communication, cooperation and concentration. The layout in plan of the cubic building is based on the shape of a four-leaf clover. While the northern and southern leaves contain the circulation cores and lifts, the two other leaves open up as spacious atria in the form of elliptical cylinders. The vertical spaces extending up to the 5th floor just under the roof allow views onto each floor below.
Stairs in the form of stepped ramps loop upwards and link the different floors and project areas into a continuous, vertically and horizontally staggered space continuum. The internal areas of the open floors are divided into various zones for communication and team working. In the zones along the facade are the spaces for activities requiring concentration and intensive thought.
The continuous glass facade of the Innovation Centre allows the action inside the building to be viewed from outside. Its plain, somewhat austere design creates a contemporary counterpoint to the adjacent listed buildings dating back to 1903. The projecting upper storeys of the new building are double-glazed, with the external armoured glass arranged like lamellas rotated at different angles. The exciting, nuanced appearance this creates for the facade corresponds precisely with the character of the interior of the building and picks up the rhythm set by the existing buildings. Their historic dimension continues to be visible in the fragments reflected on the mirror-coated facade zones of the Innovation Centre. The facade is divided horizontally according to the floors, with single and double storey areas. The complex interior floor layout of the new building and the links between individual project working and knowledge areas can be read from the external appearance. After dark, the Innovation Centre becomes an illuminated symbol for the pulsating corporate headquarters.