Doubly brilliant

The façade of the “copper coil” – radiant and with rounded corners.

The lecture theater burrowed into the earth with its concrete façade can be clearly made out.

Building work on the “copper coil”, the institutional building for Electrical Engineering of the University of Rostock, has been completed and now complements the Südstadt university campus. A further cause for celebration is that the building has won first prize in the context of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Landesbaupreis architecture award.
The edifice stands out even at a distance and impresses through the horizontal structuring and copper façade. The architecture practice of sehw Architektur has managed to create a direct reference to the Electrical Engineering faculty through the materiality and shape of the outer shell. Laboratory, office, and seminar spaces are housed on the new build’s four stories. A lecture theater that has been lowered by half a story into the ground connects directly to the building and emphasizes the entrance.
WTM Engineers was responsible for the structural engineering of the building, which in this project was characterized in particular by vibration requirements, high traffic loads and the planning of a construction impermeable to the pressure of water from below.