New cooling system in Aachen

摘要

As the existing refrigeration technorogy installations could not be expanded any further, the most economical solution was to add a technical floor onto an existing five-storey building at the institute. The institute building is in an exposed position near the technical college's largest lecture theatre, and offers the opportunity to highlight the RWTH's strong presence in the city through the architecture of the new storey. In addition to static limitations, special attention had to be paid to the various technical installations and superstructures, and to the possibility of expanding them, because of the existing built volumes. This led to a decision to use a bridge with stanchions and steel roof trusses as the primary load-bearing structure, in which all functional elements were "suspended", and the load from which is removed exclusively through the existing outer and centre columns. The bridge structure was mounted externally; to limit intrusion into the existing structure, to maximise the height of the unified wall sections and to act as an important design feature.