Schüco Welcome Forum

The design for Schüco’s new Welcome Forum results from a competition we won in March, 2018.
The Welcome Forum is not an entirely new building, but a transformation of two existing former storehouses on the company’s campus in the city of Bielefeld, Germany. It will perform as a showroom and serve visitors as well as employees with spaces for communication and relaxation. Due to its intended significance the building’s formerly pragmatic look has been carefully developed towards a more elaborate and even festive appearance. While the re-utilization of existing structures and materials establishes a clear connection to the history of the place, their transformation answers the need for new functions and contemporary aesthetics.
A dynamic, yet controlled formal language integrates simple room-layouts with rather complex interlocked continuous spaces. The Welcome Forum shall appear at the same time exciting and sophisticated, yet adequate, pragmatic and down-to-earth. It initiates carefully composed spatial sequencing and establishes numerous connections of exterior and interior spaces.
The foyer is in the midst of the building, so that it literally places the visitor at the heart of the building. This change in typology allows for a very rich circular experience of all the functions that are now located around the spectator: in a 360° “pan-shot” the view opens towards the showroom, a lounge-area, a digital-studio that extends the physical space into the digital realm, or the café.