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| NürnbergMesse sets standards in the exhibition landscape  With some 1.2 million visitors and 120 international exhibitions and congresses a year, the NürnbergMesse Group is one of Europe's leading exhibition companies. As a result of the growing numbers of visitors and exhibitors, the exhibition site has been extended step by step since the 1970s and today presents a varied landscape of individual halls and congress and administration buildings. The redesign by kadawittfeldarchitektur now gives this historically developed conglomerate a uniform architectural face that will become the distinctive visiting card of the Nürnberg exhibition and congress venue.Access to the park and line of sight to the east part of the site: the slatted roof and staircase point to the heart of the exhibition grounds. "The variety of themes in the exhibition industry demands great flexibility in thinking and acting, " says Managing Director Bernd A. Diederichs, explaining the NürnbergMesse success model. The Aachen architects Klaus Kada and Gerhard Wittfeld have combined this variety spatially under the roof of an architectural language that integrates the existing buildings and responds specifically to the needs of visitors and exhibitors. Altogether some 47 million euros have been invested in the building extensions, the redevelopment measures and the reorganization of the Mitte (central) area. The dynamic slatted roof hovers like a large horizontal sail 17 metres above the large forecourt of the Mitte exhibition area. Beneath the elegant construction is a loggia sheltered from the weather that bundles the streams of visitors from the car parks, taxi rank and underground station and combines surrounding exhibition and congress buildings dating from various construction phases to form one visual unit. Last but not least, the new roof with its significant pointed end also acts as a landmark for the centre of the exhibition site. The 17-metre high slatted roof can't be missed and shows the way to the "New Mitte" area. Openness and transparency are the main characteristics of the day-lit entrance hall, which replaces a previous building. The new 17-metre high entrance to the Mitte congress centre is a versatile communication area that covers 6, 300 square metres and forms the lively heart of the exhibition site. Views of the open adjoining exhibition and congress areas dating from the 1970s and views to the outside to the forecourt and the north side of the park simplify orientation – the whole dimension of NürnbergMesse opens up from the entrance area. Central functions like information and registration counters, cloakrooms and a bistro divide the area into individual zones distributed like islands on the anthracite floor of cast stone. The major attraction of the new entrance building is an elegant, futuristic-looking building that protrudes into the spacious interior area like a large, angular sculpture: the new Brüssel hall. Sloping surfaces and edges characterize its distinctive architecture, which rises above the ground floor like a cut crystal. NürnbergMesse sets new standards in terms of material, engineering and energy aspects with the redesign of the Mitte area. The renovation of the facades of the two existing hexagonal buildings improves the energy consumption of these buildings. For example, insulating the outer reinforced concrete parts massively reduced the previous thermal bridges. Out of consideration for the available resources, the advantages of natural air circulation are used in the 18-metre high entrance hall. Decentralized furniture items like the water basin in the centre of the hall bring scavenging air into the high room through their slatted side panels. Openings at the top of the facade provide air extraction. Heat recovery principles are employed for the ventilation of Brüssel hall and its foyer. Sustainability aspects were also decisive in the choice of the material for the roof construction: the air cushion area of altogether 11, 000 square metres is made of 100 % recyclable ETFE membranes. The extremely low weight of the innovative material enabled the supporting construction to be appreciably reduced, which resulted in massive savings in materials. All construction measures were completed in only 18 months under operational conditions. They put NürnbergMesse in the limelight with trend-setting architecture that uses its resources sensibly and with consideration of sustainability criteria. write your comments about the article :: © 2010 Construction News :: home page |