The WindLab research laboratory on Küpkersweg is one of this year's winners of the prestigious "German Design Award". "A timelessly modern design that fulfils the requirements of a closely networked scientific working method," was the jury's statement.
At the award ceremony last Friday in Frankfurt, the German Design Council honoured the architectural firm hammeskrause architeken in Stuttgart. The office received the "Special Mention" award in the architecture category for the design of the research laboratory for turbulence and wind energy systems (WindLab for short). The jury emphasised that the design subtly reflects the field of research with strikingly designed details.
The four-storey WindLab provides space for 130 scientists from the Centre for Wind Energy Research (ForWind) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES. The centrepiece of the research building with 2,300 square metres of floor space is the 30-metre-long wind tunnel, in which wind speeds of up to 150 kilometres per hour can be achieved. The wind tunnel can be used to experimentally research the interaction between atmospheric currents and wind turbines or their components. Turbulent wind fields can also be generated using a special grid. The team of architects took the idea of the lattice from inside the wind tunnel and incorporated it into the design of the expanded metal shutters. The combination of the turbulence-generating grid and a wind tunnel of this size makes the ForWind tunnel unique.
"Just two and a half years after moving in, you can already see the great importance of the WindLab for the implementation of the underlying research programme. The interaction between scientists from the fields of simulation, experimentation and free-field measurement takes place here in a more compact and efficient way than was previously possible. The fact that we can also hold our own international conferences just a few metres away from these activities within the WindLab further accelerates the knowledge transfer," says ForWind Managing Director Dr Stephan Barth. The design concept for special communication centres, which are available to the scientists in addition to office and laboratory space, has also been a success: They promote quick and uncomplicated dialogue between the working groups and disciplines and create an open atmosphere that is also perceived positively by visitors to the WindLab.
