The masterplan required two towers to mark the entrance to the Garden Show and Building exhibition. The big-brother of the pair, the giant, striped (Jacobs-coat) Sauerbruch and Hutton building, a new hive for Hamburg’s Planning Department (BSU) was not, according to the competition brief, to be upstaged by its neighbour. Already at the outset the bumpy road forward was in evidence when the black facade (no competition for polychromy) of the premiated BOLLES+WILSON entry was rejected by the developers of the railway-track side of the same block – not the right statement for their housing for the elderly. The facade mutated to green. “No green”, said the same developer, green is the colour of their chairman’s football team’s archrivals. The architects insisted that football allegiances is not a credible basis for urban planning decisions, and supported by the ubiquitous director of planning, the corner tower remained green. To get planning approval the developers were caused to sign a commitment that the green ceramic façade, a thematicised official entry to the Garden Show, would not be compromised during planning and construction. A wise requirement as fast track planning was necessitated by delays due to wobbly project financing around 2011. Further down the track a rapid rethink of the green facade was again necessitated by ‘just-in-time’ scheduling. The planed gluing of the rippled ceramic tile stripes would have to happen in winter (sub zero temperatures render glues impotent). A dry system of hung ceramic panels was at the last minute chosen and the respectfully stepping facade arrived as the IBA building exhibition opened.

The 9-floor tower is a medical centre, highly installed individual doctors rooms. Apartments and duplex penthouses with sculptural cut-out balconies occupy the top three floors. A darkening of the green ceramic facade signals a separate function for the four-floor wing to the south. This is the InselAkademie promoting sport for teenagers – not only from the surrounding Wilhelmsburg dockland district, characterised by social housing, immigration and unemployment. The upper floors of the InselAkadamie are group apartments for sporting youth and the lower two floors seminar and the temporary administration rooms of the IBA (International Building Exhibition). This building is in fact the hub of the IBA and also post IBA activities.

The entrance to Schlosspark Neersen is framed by the parallel sides of the Schloss / City Hall and the new building for the City Hall technical Departments.

With its wide span-cantilevered canopy and transparent facade the new addition presents its functions like a building scale vitrine.

The enclosing back wall is in a discrete and modest industrial brick, in keeping with the suburban surrounds and at the same time a reference to the nearby Mies van der Rohe Haus Lange and Haus Esters.

‘A staging of shopping’. The widespan shop outlet typology usually situated on the periphery is here reconstituted as an urban facade, city near and addressing the city bound / city exiting traffic. Three stores (RS, Yellow, Brands) with an overall shop area of 5.000 m2 cluster with warehouse and delivery bays, around an internal parking piazza. An advertising tower erupts on one corner, a supersign, a new actor in the quartier’s tower landscape (Trinity Church and Fire Station Tower).

A theatrically proportioned roof frames the pedestrian/car entrance. This transition space is a constructed perspective (rejecting any ideal viewing point), a reciprocal scenographic framing of inner and outer world. The hovering roof grows out of and connects the two larger shops. Logistics are critical – 18 m long lorries cross the piazza and disappear into the building.

The exaggerated scale of the wooden window frames in RS (which sells wooden furniture) are stacked like boxes (These 35 cm wide frames sidestep a local building regulation that prohibits wooden facades on retail structures). A dialogue between contained and container that continues in the interior detailing. Both structure (prefabricated concrete) and the materiality (fibre-cement panels) of the facades respond with an economic and systemized appropriateness to the ‘outlet’ building type.

The BEIC is in the state of becoming. It already exists on the agendas of countless participating planners, librarians, expertly shepherding clients, politicians, Milanese and other future users. As the planning steadily marches through preliminare, definitivo and on to esecutivo phases, expectations multiply (optimism is contagious) and the physical character, the individuality, the unique spaces of this exceptional endeavour come ever more sharply into focus. Despite the grand scale the building conjures a certain intimacy for individual users. It invents an entirely new constellation of the ‘house of knowledge’, where digital ephemerality cohabits with our old friend the book. The emerging BEIC remains true to the concept that won the architectural competition. Within this architectural and organisational framework countless refinements have been invented (terracotta facade, the bar-chart-acoustically-absorptive interior panelling) and significant opportunities like the earthquake resistant wave-like ceilings have been identified and integrated.

Urban Concept – The site is linear, as is the remembered trajectory of the Stazione Vittoria. The BEIC’s two doors address the east (the centre of Milan, Viale Umbria) and the west (new subway exit, Viale Mugello and the new sport and recreation landscape beyond). An east-west pedestrian walkway runs not parallel to but through the BEIC – urban networking.

A 36 m high Urban Landmark – A vessel of culture and information, invitation, frame and enabler to multiple passages and trajectories. Entrance ramps fold surrounding pavements up to the +5.00 piazza, entrances and lobby. Reading arms extend out from the main volume.

Windows like that to the main elevator lobby on axis with the Via Vertoiba, tie through framed views the interior back into the urban context.

The terraces of the various departments frame a communicative forum, a landscape of knowledge. Reading salons nestled into the sidewalls of the frame or balcony edge desks offer a wide variety of working atmospheres. Warm acoustically absorptive materials provide the required library ambience.

Program – A 5 m high socle contains all functions outside the controlled library – Conference, Teaching Centre, Media Forum, Childrens Library with garden, carparks. The walkthrough Lobby gives a visual orientation to all departments galleried above. It flows into the entrance, general information and reference zones. Reading Rooms are on the north side, Users Own in the east arm, connecting to youth areas. Departments are on three upper balconies, with variable stores and connected via ramps in the reading arms – a flowing together. Workshops, offices and administration are in the 3 storey arm along the Via Monte Ortigara.