Phaeno, Science Center Wolfsburg, Germany: Avant-Garde Architecture, Innovative Construction

The Phaeno Science Center Wolfsburg is a building that architecturally, geometrically and structurally pushes the boundaries of imagination regarding its design development and construction process. It is a reinforced concrete structure topped by a steel roof structure. Parts of the reinforced concrete structure could only be realised using a recently developed kind of self-compacting concrete. This required extensive testing of structural elements at the University of Brunswick. The exhibition building floats 7 m above street level. It rests on ten irregularly scattered room-sized objects that resemble inverted cones. The floor-slabs, spanning up to 22 m with a structural depth of 0.9 m, consist of a girder grillage with two sets of girders intersecting at an oblique angle. The steel roof structure is a girder grillage with two sets of girders intersecting at an oblique angle as well. The girders of each set do not run parallel to each other, they radiate like the fingers of a spread hand. The roof level does not continuously remain at the same plane but jumps to different heights. Maximum span is 35 m with a structural depth of 2.0 m. The article discusses some of the remarkable details of the structure developed by the author that beyond their application in this particular building might be useful for other buildings as well. The building is an extreme example for the prominent and vital role that structural engineers play in projects like these.