Willstätt Town Hall and Offices – Willstätt
Gaiser + Partner developed a “citizen-friendly” design for Willstätt’s new town hall and offices located in Willstätt, Germany.
The new town hall of the municipality of Willstädt in a historic and characteristic mill building offers attractive and future-oriented working and meeting rooms, has a lively appearance and is designed to be citizen-friendly. At the same time, the historic fabric of the building has been preserved in order to show respect for the historical townscape, and with the town hall the municipality is positioning itself competitively for the future. The 19th-century mill with its power-plant extension dating from 1909/1910 was to be preserved in its spatial effect and construction. Gaiser + Partner achieved this by making the historical wooden supporting structure visible through glass interior walls.
In the multi-storey turbine building of the old mill, Gaiser + Partner have designed the office space as a reinforced concrete structure with a new inner facade that is detached from the outer wall. This means that the original spatial cubature is still visible. Impressive space situations are also created with air spaces at the end of the corridor spanning several storeys and vertical window elements that extend over two storeys. In order to retain the visibility of the carefully renovated and steel-reinforced historical wooden supporting structure, which features solid oak wood supports and beamed ceilings, the interior walls are fully transparent thanks to the fecoplan all-glass construction. This allows the historical wooden structure to be visible and offers maximum transparency.
Due to the glass design of the corridor walls, the furniture as a design element is of great importance and is meant to appear light and elegant. The Ad Hoc desks by Vitra, designed by architect Antonio Citterio, meet these requirements with their timeless, technically-refined appearance as do the ID Mesh office swivel chairs, also developed by Citterio. Height-adjustable tables are occasionally used. These allow employees to work standing up and are therefore particularly ergonomic, and are also pleasant for short meetings at the workplace. Koi floor lamps from Belux with direct and indirect light components offer pleasant lighting and illuminate the historic wooden-beam ceiling in an atmospheric way.
The entrance area welcomes visitors with a Vitra Suita sofa seating group in combination with Repos armchairs. The conference room on the top floor, which is spanned by a new wooden construction, features a circular conference table in combination with FinaSoft conference chairs from the Black-Forest-based manufacturer Brunner, which are impressively highlighted by circular LED lights.
Designer: Gaiser + Partner
Photography: Nikolay Kazakov
