Schultes Frank Architekten

GALILEO CONTROL CENTER

AND EXTENSION

GCC – the Galileo Control Center – that’s not one building, as it looks like – that’s two, one built on top of the other: – the complete technical program, the control rooms, hundred of computer racks, the clockworks, the laboratories, the storerooms – all that occupies the big basement- and ground floor areas; all the rest, the offices around the central hall with auditorium, café and visitors galleries, information and security, all that is set free behind the curved glass façade that opens up the GCC to the DLR-compound.

Two buildings in one, suited to the hierarchy of the security system, opened to a public well adjusted to a project of European dimension … but sheltering all delicate spaces against any kind of interference: – the central hall with its inserted towers, the row of service-cores screening and involving the galleries behind, the u-shaped crescent of offices.

‘il si muove’ – he’s right, the patron of this ambitious space-program that Europe has put on its flag – ‘and she moves yet, our mother earth’ – a touch of these dynamic forces should radiate too from this control center near Munich, – with a spacial suggestion of Galilean contradiction, a silent move, heavy in material, displaying the lightness of stone, cast stone, glowing in the light.

SITE

Oberpfaffenhofen

82234 Weßling

TYPOLOGY

Satellite control center

CLIENT

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.

in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Köln

ARCHITECT

Schultes Frank Architekten
Frank Schultes Witt

DESIGN

Axel Schultes Charlotte Frank

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Christoph Witt

COLLABORATORS

Laabs Lobeck Schuldes

Kahl Bauer Timm

COMPETITION – COMPLETION

2005 – 2008 2013

BUILT-UP AREA

1.814 m²

GROSS FLOOR AREA

6.065 m²

GROSS VOLUME

24.300 m³

MAIN FLOOR SPACE

3.065 m²

EAVES HEIGHT

10 m

HEIGHT

16 m

CONSTRUCTION

reinforced concrete fair-faced concrete

SITE SUPERVISION

aichner-kazzer Architekten

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER

Schlaich Bergermann und Partner

STATUTORY STRESS ANALYSIS

IB Rückert

FAÇADE ENGINEER

R+R Fuchs Ingenieurbüro für Fassadentechnik

BUILDING SERVICES ENGINEER

HL-PP Consult Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH

STRUCTURAL PHYSICS

Ingenieurbüro Axel C. Rahn

FIRE PROTECTION

Kersken + Kirchner

ACOUSTICS