Ricola Europe’s new factory building is located at an idyllic wooded site between the Rhine-Rhone Canal and the river Ill on the southern edge of the city of Mulhouse.
The building is to be used simultaneously as a factory and for storage. Its simple hall with flexible floor plan divisions offers the perfect solution. The building’s form recalls a cardboard box lying on the floor with open flaps. The cantilevered extending roofs on the two long sides open up both to the landscape and to the entrance and loading areas for fork lifts and transport vehicles, as well they create shade and weather protection.
The short sides of the factory building are each closed by a black concrete wall. Water from the roof runs down over these black concrete walls and trickles into a deep bed of Alsatian gravel. The water running down the walls forms a fine film of plant life; a natural drawing ensues. Both long walls are light walls providing the work area with constant, pleasantly filtered daylight. Light filtering occurs through printed translucent polycarbonate façade panels, a common industrial building material. Using silkscreen, these panels are printed with a repetitive plant motif based on photograph’s by Karl Blossfeldt.
The effect the panels have on the interior can be compared to that of a curtain – textile-like – that creates a relationship to the site’s trees and shrubs. Viewed from outside, the translucent printed panels on the façade and the extended roof again recall textiles – the lining of a dress or the inner padding of a box. If daylight diminishes, the printing is barely visible from outside and the material of the façade panels becomes much stronger. Their surfaces then seem rather closed an |
