Designing is a broad field and, depending on the office or designer, a very individual matter – this was also reflected in the diverse topics and speakers at the second bdla Designers’ Days, which took place in Berlin at the beginning of November. While last year’s focus was on natural stone and concrete, this time it was primarily on wood and metal.
Martin Illner from Rosenheim University of Applied Sciences and öbv expert for wood protection and damage and Ralf Feser, Managing Director of the Institute for Maintenance and Corrosion Protection Technology at South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences, spoke about the qualities and possible uses of the two building materials. Key lessons learned on the subject of wood: Heartwood is to be preferred in outdoor areas and should also be explicitly specified in tenders. And: If tropical wood cannot be avoided, then at least no living trees will fall with wood from reservoirs.
Open insights
Katja Benfer from bbzl landschaften städtebau architektur, architect Peter Haimerl, Dominik Bueckers from Studio Vulkan and A.W. Faust from sinai landschaftsarchitekten provided entertaining and sometimes very open insights into the very different working methods and material decisions. While Peter Haimerl always develops and presents his extraordinary ideas with a twinkle in his eye, bbzl design individual street furniture for their projects with just as much passion as time investment. Peter Wieland also took a long time – over ten years – to design and develop a suitable “container” to match the famous Eiermann desk, which his metal workshop has been producing exclusively since 1965. This was because his father, Adam Wieland, then workshop manager at the Eiermann Chair in Karlsruhe, had the ingenious idea of making the originally fixed table legs removable for transportation. A.W. Faust focused his presentation on his office’s most important project this year, the Buga in Heilbronn, and explained why which material was used where. Dominik Bueckers showed projects that play with the use of non-standard materials, such as a security fence made of pressed-in reinforcement mats around the Winterthur waste incineration plant or sheet piling as plant troughs on the Magerareal in Zurich. Because, he realized, everything that is not standard makes everyday life interesting and memorable.
The almost 200 participants will certainly remember a lot of interesting facts and inspiration for designing in everyday office life.