Hansjörg Göritz  Studio - Works

Ernst-August-Galleria Mall

Hannover, Germany

2004

 

A diaphanous light stone dress attires a ninety thousand square meter mall, taking up an entire center city block. The sensory  Florentine glass block is a wrapping screen as much as it celebrates commerce as an urban event. As if inspired by Paco Rabanne's avantgarde metal dress, Issey Miyake's modern fabrics, or exquisite fragrance glass flacons, such resemblance make this monochrome mineral fabric one single move of sublime simplicity.

 

Mastery of material, methods, and light link the facade design of the new Ernst-August-Galleria mall on the main square with the early Expo 2000 Metro Rail Station project executed a decade ago on the city's periphery. Looking back at the photographs, it is the lantern-like volume that draws our attention, making a serene place day and night, and demarcating a gateway point on crossing traffic lines into the city. Here the simple volume aligns with the amber colored 19th century ensemble, adding Alabaster effects and Murano amber as a timeless interpretation of transparency to the historic brick substance of the Hanovarian School.

 

Going beyond our studio's predecessor of the mid nineties, the single cast wrap for eight hundred meters of urban block circumference requires the mastery of an expression of homogeneity. Refined state-of-the-art detailing as a dry assembly facade make twenty thousand square meter of suspended screen a pilot project for the variation of a literally seamless curtain wall.

 

In collaboration with

Günther Despang, Martin Despang

 

Project Team

Stefan Höpfinger, Claudia Altrogge,

Matthias Buchmeier, Jörg Steveker

 

Lighting Design

Licht.Kunst. Licht, Andreas Schulz

 

Glass Facade Engineering

Drewes + Speth

 

Glass Facade Consulting

Hoffmann Glas, Horst Hoppe

 

Glass Manufacturing

Vetroarredo SPA, Loriana Baglioni

 

Photography

Olaf Baumann