Music Center

The music center in Plochingen is Baden-Württemberg's educational and meeting place for amateur music. Nestled between an industrial area and railway tracks, the building nevertheless makes a strong impression on the townscape and the surrounding area. The building complex consists of two taller structures, which are connected to each other by walls. The wall on the street side opens up with a large archway. A connecting courtyard ceiling with a large circular light-flooded opening rests on the connecting walls. The south-western part of the building houses the academy, music rooms, administrative offices and an orchestra hall. The second structure houses overnight rooms and a restaurant.

The award-winning project called for structural engineering creativity right from the planning of the excavation pit and foundations. Due to the proximity to the Neckar, the immediately adjacent alluvial loam and the highly water-permeable Neckar gravel, a watertight excavation pit was initially planned. Back-anchored sheet pile walls and a cantilevered, overlapping bored pile wall in the area of the adjacent railroad tracks were then implemented. The sheet pile walls were installed up to 7 m below the bottom of the excavation pit in the dense "variegated marl" to ensure that the excavation pit was impermeable to water.

As the load-bearing gravel was not directly below the foundation base, measures were required to lower the loads. By laying the foundation on an optimized number of ductile cast iron piles, it was possible to dispense with the need for costly lean concrete lower guides into the load-bearing Neckar gravel. As a result, it was possible to implement an optimized, concrete and_CO2-reduced foundation under the existing boundary conditions and in terms of sustainability.

The buildings were then planned as a reinforced concrete construction reduced to the necessary minimum. The orchestra hall was realized column-free through the use of slender reinforced concrete beams. The connecting courtyard ceiling, which is thermally decoupled from the adjacent building components and measures 20 x 20 m, protrudes up to 6 m from its supports through a circular opening with a diameter of 16 m and was realized with a 30 cm thick flat ceiling. The ceiling was connected to the two structures with isocages. The connection to the lateral accompanying walls was made using a clamping effect.