Located in Karlsruhe, Germany, the Mensa Moltke was designed by J. MAYER H. Architects is a new canteen for the Technical College, Teacher Training College and the State Academy for Fine Art has been completed north of the Moltkestrasse. This new address will form an attractive new centre for the campus where the disciplines can meet, eat and exchange ideas.

The canteen’s location in the Moltkestrasse in the transitional zone between the built up campus to the south and the natural open space of the Hartwald Forest to the north. This is a spot where the character of the campus area is particularly clear. The orientation of the building, with its generously glazed facades, is toward the urban life of the campus, from where the diners arrive.

The dissolution of the structure into stem-like posts shows an associative relationship to the wooded areas nearby and creates an atmospheric transition between the buildings to the south and the shady forest to the north.

The conceptual approach to the project started from the sculptural idea of taking the largest buildable plot of land, cleaving it from the ground and organizing the functions of the canteen inside the rift created. From this came the mass of stringy stem-like supports that form between the two plates as they are pulled apart, as a logical conclusion of the idea of the separation of the two horizontal planes. In this way, the roof of the building is also covered with grass, to follow the concept of a cleft plot of land lifted into the air, as well as to help create a sustainable building.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Architecture Design. Tags: Baden-Württemberg, campus canteen's design, Germany, Germany architecture design, Hartwald Forest, J. Mayer H. Architects, Karlsruhe, Mensa Moltke, State Academy for Fine Art, Teacher Training College, Technical College. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.