Produktionstechnikzentrum TU-Graz
(Graz, Austria), Competition, 2008

Program:	technical production centre, kids- & officebuilding, Campusarea, TU Graz
Client:	BIG - Bundes Immobilien Gesellschaft
Partner:	Delta Group
With:	Andrea Überbacher, Marta Neic
Visualization:	Michael Lisner / Virtual DynamiX, Vienna
Size/Area:	22.500 m²

Design Strategy
A continuous band opens up the building site and serves as a backbone for the elongated site, connecting with the existing elements such as paths, street car tracks, and required set-back lines, and forms a smooth exterior. Right-angled boxes made out of pre-fabricated wooden boards extend from the band at varying distances, and create a second, differentiated, facade.

Construction Engineering Principles
The 3 x 16.5 m cross-laminated timber boards are used as vertical structural elements which create halls, work spaces, and seminar rooms in the ground floor without the addition weight-bearing columns. Thus, the ground floor remains permeable and flexible. The building heights for the other floors are largely defined by the board formats with 3.24m (including 10cm threshold). The grid can be read in the façade, and is continued into the building interior, where it then dissolves, creating a virtual spatial perception. The rooms flow into each other, but can be separated by sliding elements, so that the spaces can be expanded and shifted according to working practice and project needs. Foyer, entrances, and staircases/cores are to be built using solid construction methods.

The sustainable quality of the local, pre-fabricated cross-laminated timber boards are well-known, and the local expertise of the TU Graz in cooperation with industry and its well-developed know-how of construction methods provides a synergetic effect. The base product of engineered timber boards was largely developed at the TU Graz, and the use of the product in a 5 story building – although within range – would provide a challenge to the local building codes, yet become a strong symbol of the competence in innovation which the TU Graz has developed.