Frog Queen / Graz

The Graz-based design collective SPLITTERWERK was commissioned to design this headquarters building for PRISMA Engineering, a machine and motor technology company also located in Graz. The objective was to design a structure which could house the company’s various research and development programs, and selectively showcase the work to a varied range of often competing clientele. Thus the building design needed to accommodate both high- end testing and presentation without jeopardizing the security and secrecy with which the work is developed.

The building form approximates a cube, measuring 18.125 x 18.125 x 17m, wrapped on all four elevations with a pixilated pattern of square panels. From a distance, these panels appear to be painted in a range of ten values of grey tone, together dematerializing the volume of the building against both the trees of the surrounding site and the clouds and sky. Thus the cubic building is at once monumental in its objecthood in the open landscape – scale-less and immaterial – and yet utterly non-iconographic in its overall form.

















































© by Splitterwerk


INFORMATION

ArchitecturalAuthor:Splitterwerk

Project Name: Frog Queen
Location of Site: Graz, Steiermark, Austria
Project team: Irene Berto, Mark Blaschitz, Erika Brunnermayer, Marius Ellwanger, Hannes Freiszmuth, Johann Grabner, Edith Hemmrich, Ute Himmelberg, Bernhard Kargl, Benjamin Nejedly, Josef Roschitz, Maik Rost, Ingrid Somitsch, Nikolaos Zachariadis
Client: PRISMA Engineering Maschinen- und Motorentechnik GmbH
Project Management: Ingenos ZT GmbH
Structural Consultant: werkraum zt-gmbh, Peter Bauer, David Lemp
Building Services Consultant: Ing. Rudolf Sonnek GmbH
HVACR Design: Guenter Grabner
Energy Consultant: Dr. Tomberger ZT GesmbH, Hannes Veitsberger
Electrical Design: Erich Watzke, Moskon & Busz GmbH, Rudolf Busz
Project Area: 1,400 sqm
Project year: 2009
Photographs: © Nikolaos Zachariadis

via Archdaily