Mensa am Bildungscampus Heilbronn, DE
Special glazing provides plenty of daylight
The new canteen on the educational campus in Heilbronn is an architectural showpiece. The architects in the Stuttgart office of Auer Weber placed the cafeteria in the middle of the central campus square under an artificial green hill. The dining room receives daylight via the generous glass fronts of the entrance area and a fully glazed inner courtyard. For the complex glazing with its different requirements, the façade builders relied on products from SCHOLLGLAS.
The canteen on the educational campus in Heilbronn is one of the 21 award-winning canteens of the Heidelberg Student Union, which attaches great importance to a sustainable food concept. For the growing number of students, a new canteen with more than 500 seats was opened in spring 2020, doubling the capacity of the old canteen. The education campus is a project funded by the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, which aims to promote the quality of life on campus and a sustainable impact on the knowledge city of Heilbronn with its commitment.
Project data
Architect
Auer Weber Architects, Stuttgart
Building owners
Dieter Schwarz Foundation (DSS), Neckarsulm
Schwarz Immobilienmanagement GmbH & Co. KG, Neckarsulm
Façade Planner
Roschmann Glas GmbH, Gersthofen
Products
usedSolar control glass GEWE-therm sun
safety glass GEWE-safe LSG
heat-strengthened glass GEWE-tvg LSG
Photos
Roland Halbe
A canteen in the green hill
Clear structures and linear forms characterize the campus landscape of the institute buildings. The canteen as a special building block with its organic shapes sets a new accent on campus. In order to preserve the central square as an open space for the students, Auer Weber moved the cafeteria and kitchen underground. Above it, they designed an artificial hilly landscape – green, walkable and, as a sunbathing lawn above the cafeteria, a communicative meeting point in everyday student life. With its free forms and green spaces, the cafeteria gives the new campus center an unmistakable quality of stay.
A thoroughfare running across the square with great momentum cuts through the hilly landscape into two parts. In the middle of it are the ground-level entrances to the cafeteria and kitchen. Students are led from a bright foyer via a wide staircase and a glazed elevator to the actual dining hall in the basement. An elliptical inner courtyard made of glass, embedded in the “Mensa Hill”, lets in plenty of daylight and offers 60 additional seats for the canteen guests when the weather is nice. The cafeteria rooms are also open to students outside lunchtime and can be used all day.
Special glazing provides plenty of daylight
Generous glass surfaces ensure a rich daylight yield in the underground rooms, separating the interior from the outside space wherever the lawns rise from the ground. The elliptical inner courtyard in the middle of the large refectory hill even leads down to the dining hall level and, with its high glass façade, allows plenty of daylight into the deep room. A smaller courtyard was created to illuminate the kitchen. Its façade is also completely glazed.
Almost 50 percent of the lenses are individual model shapes, some of which are bent in different radii. The parapet glass above follows the radii of the panes below and forms a safe precipitation edge for the accessible hill. The entire area of the roof construction disappears behind an edge print. For this purpose, the upper and lower parts of the panes were screen-printed with a silver-coloured metallic special shade
RAL 7048.
The complex glazing was manufactured with SCHOLLGLAS products. The GEWE-therm® sun solar control glass was used for the room partitions, which allows light-flooded interiors without heating up in strong sunlight. To fasten the frameless glazing, special U-profiles were integrated into the edge seal. In order to achieve a homogeneous façade appearance, the edge seal was covered all around with a special metallic ceramic paint. The edge printing in the uniform colour continues inside the building.
Increased injury protection in the parapet areas above is provided by the safety glass GEWE-safe® LSG. The functional glazing supports the architectural concept and makes a significant contribution to the fact that the light-flooded cafeteria of the Heilbronn Education Campus with its very special atmosphere promises to become an unmistakable place of encounter not only for the students of the Heilbronn Education Campus.
