Teaching and communication in harmony
New construction of the Hamm campus for Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences
The Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences is one of four universities founded by the State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2009. The foundations are part of the measures with which the State wants to create more than 11,000 new study places by 2020. An independent new campus with specialised rooms was created in Hamm for the Hamm-Lippstadt MINT University on the 57.000 m² site of a former Federal Armed Forces hospital. Grouped around a central square is an ensemble of three buildings finished in a light-coloured facing brick with a functional style and openness. The design for the campus was the winning entry in a Europe-wide architectural competition. The two freestanding buildings H1 and H2 accommodate the central functions of auditorium centre, refectory and campus office, as well as the media centre and administration. The combined H3/H4 building is the largest building complex on the campus, and has been arranged in the form of a spine-and-fingers type layout. It accommodates offices and laboratories with a range of different functional requirements.
The design of the campus was conceived around the idea of a central square. All main building entrances face this central point and it is from there that all buildings are accessed. The routes from the buildings lead to the campus. This means that the square functions as the centre of academic life. The campus architecture encourages students and teaching staff to congregate on the square, at meeting points and in work areas, and fosters communication.
Access to the campus is from the city and Marker Allee via a forecourt. Students and users are welcomed by an art object. The anthracite-coloured logo of the university is an unmistakable identifier. All functions on the campus can be reached on foot as they are only a short distance apart. Some car and motorbike parking has been provided to the west of the main entrance. The spine-and-fingers type layout of the H3/H4 building, with green spaces between the fingers, faces the city and creates an interlacing of the university buildings with the natural environment.
Learning and recreation combined
The angular H1 building complex which features between one to four storeys consists of the auditorium and the refectory buildings, which are linked by a bridge on the first floor. This creates direct access from the parking area to the centre of the campus at ground level. The auditorium centre provides seven auditoria of different sizes, with tiered seating, on three levels, as well as nine seminar rooms with 1,150 seats. A lobby leads to the two-storey entrance foyer of the auditorium building, with an open main staircase. Owing to the size of the foyer and its technical equipment installations, it is also used for cultural and university events.
Beneath the tiered seating in the auditoria is a special construction feature with a space-defining effect. The construction of the tiered floor consists of prefabricated concrete elements and thereby reduces the propagation of sound, thus enhancing the impression of high-quality space. In addition, the hollow spaces of the concrete steps accommodate the ducts for the mechanical ventilation of the auditorium. Air enters the space at floor level. The auditorium seating consists of a system in which the seats are attached with their backs suspended from the tables which are anchored to the floor. This means that the auditorium seats do not have their own feet and it is easier to clean the floor.
The design places great importance on communication areas such as seating niches and recreational areas. Open workplaces for students are provided at many places of the campus, for example in front of seminar rooms, in the library, on galleries and in the connecting corridors of the H3/H4 building. At the head of the auditorium building, these workplaces can also be seen from the outside due to the glazed facade elements which function as a "window to the city". This gives passers one floor. Every day it produces up to 650 meals which users can put together themselves using the free-flow -by an insight into academic work.
The refectory has been arranged on system. The dining room faces south, while the bistro faces the campus square. Students can use both facilities as work and communication areas also outside the opening times for meals. The kitchen and all storage rooms has been arranged on the same level as the dining room; only the staff changing rooms are in the basement. Supplies to, and waste disposal from the refectory, take place via the delivery yard to the west. The campus office at the eastern end of the single-storey refectory tract functions as a central contact point for students.
Administration and library
Together, the media centre and university administration forms a building complex to the south of the campus. The two-storey mediatheque with media desks and user workplaces features a modern design. It contains a total of 20,000 media items, 5,000 of which in printed form. The students can work on two levels, some of the workplaces being in two round space sculptures. On the ground floor is a separate work room with a view to the landscape outside. The workplaces on the second floor are arranged in an open plan arrangement with individual desks.
The four-storey administration building joins on to the media centre. Both the media centre and the administration tract are accessed via a joint lobby. The ground floor and first floor accommodate primarily administration rooms for the media centre and central services. The offices on the second and third floors are reserved for the administration of the university.
Departments and laboratories
The spine-and-finger layout of the H3/H4 building complex comprises three levels and holds all department functions, with individual offices, open plan offices, seminar rooms and laboratories. Along the angled concourse of the campus, three tracts are signed for offices towards Marker Allee and three tracts for laboratories towards Holunderweg. Between the wings of the buildings, along the concourse, glazed stairwells provide vertical access to the floors above.
The offices provided for the lecturers are small in size and designed for individual use. The idea is that the teachers should not remain in their offices for any length of time, but instead should meet with colleagues and students. For this latter purpose, the university provides an above-average number of meeting rooms – one meeting room is shared between three lecturers.
On the basis of the systematic fit-out grid of 1.20 m and the depth of the building which includes two corridors either side of a central zone, it is possible to arrange different space zones in modular fashion. In the office tract, rooms with a depth of 4.40 m have been provided for offices and rooms with a depth of 6.50 m for seminar rooms so that it is also possible to accommodate open plan offices without any problem. The central zones between the two corridors are used for secondary functions. The storey height of 4.50 m has been chosen to suit the laboratories, thus allowing for a level transition between laboratories and offices.
In addition to physics, biology and chemistry laboratories, the university has a clean room area and light technology laboratories. The clean room laboratory is a room-within-a-room construction on a suspended floor, which makes it possible to carry out tests in dust-free conditions. The clean room laboratories have air-locks and are operated with positive air pressure. Air is continually cleaned via high-level filters, blown in and then extracted via air extraction at floor level. The continuous intake of filtered air ensures that air-borne particles are forced down to the floor and that the concentration of these particles in the room is as low as possible. The air exchange rate depends on the ISO clean room class. Users change their clothes in the preceding staff rooms and enter the clean room laboratory via an air-lock.
Vibration-free optical laboratories are located on the ground floor of the H3 building, at the corner of Marker Allee/Holunderweg. These laboratories contain extremely sensitive measuring instruments that are highly intolerant of vibration. Vibrations in these rooms have been reduced to a minimum by special provisions in the foundations beneath these laboratories. In order to prevent the transmission of vibrations from adjoining parts of the building, an additional expansion joint was incorporated.
The two-storey technical tract is located in the southern part of the H3 building. The university uses the technical tract for large test installations, amongst others, for example in the field of mechanical engineering. This hall structure has an area of 1,500 m² and has the benefit of a crane system. This covers the entire length of the hall and makes it possible to transport loads with a weight of up to 10 tonnes. This hall in the technical tract is suitable for HGV access to allow for the delivery of large items. Immediately adjacent are the workshops for use by the technical facility and the university generally. These workshops are equipped with gas installations and air extraction systems, which make them suitable for a wide range of activities including welding.
Colour scheme
The colour concept has been restricted to a combination of white and anthracite, with yellow used occasionally for highlights; this scheme has been applied throughout the campus buildings. All internal walls, with the exception of the concourse, have been finished in white. To aid orientation, the concourses in the H3/H4 building complex are finished in yellow. All floor finishes consist of anthracite-coloured materials such as reconstituted stone, caoutchouc and carpeting.
The bright, friendly water-struck clinker brick generates a lively appearance as it contrasts with the dark elements of the building, thereby reflecting the modern aspirations of the university. The high-quality glazed facing brick was specially developed and produced for the campus. The small format of the brick reinforces the impression of the Cubist facade design. The windows are arranged as fenestration bands in the facade, with solid panels underneath, and are mostly fixed-glazed. Closed window casements can be opened to allow for natural ventilation of the rooms.
Energy and services installations
The entire services infrastructure of the campus has been installed in a plant basement beneath the H3/H4 building complex, as well as on the roof in the form of ventilation units. The plant basement includes the water supply and treatment, heating and cooling aggregates, transformers, emergency standby generators and compressed air aggregates. All buildings on the campus are serviced from the plant basement via an underground services duct. This services duct is generously sized, measuring 3 m by 4 m in cross-section, in order to ensure good flexibility in the case that additional installations would have to be installed, and to allow for maintenance work. The main power distribution has been installed in the form of a copper power rail. The copper power rail serving all buildings is dimensioned such that it is possible to install any subsequent extensions to the power supply without any difficulty. The H1 and H2 buildings are also connected to the services plant via supply ducts. The services installations to the laboratories have been placed in non-specific ducts at the ends of the rooms.
Cooling is supplied by a purpose-made environmentally benign CO compression cooling aggregate, with a cooling output of 120 kW, and a conventional cooling aggregate with an additional output of 600 kW. The CO compression cooling aggregate generates waste heat throughout the year because laboratories, server rooms, the kitchen, refrigeration rooms, refrigerators and cold storage cells have to be supplied with cooling even when external temperatures are low. This waste heat from the cooling aggregates is used in winter in the heating system, thereby providing part of the necessary output. The main heating output is provided by two large boilers. The technical control of the two university locations, Hamm and Lippstadt, is carried out via BACnet by a higher level management unit at the Hamm campus.
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