Foster and Partners is an international studio for architecture, planning and design, led by Lord Norman Foster.
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We produced a 3D model of the new library for the Faculty of Philology at the Free University, Berlin. The brief was to produce a stylistic model which highlighted the roof support structure of the building which would be used for exhibition display. This model was not actually used as a tool within the design process, as the building had already been built.
With more than 39,000 students, The Free University is the largest of Berlin’s three universities. The redevelopment scheme included the restoration of its Modernist buildings and the design of a new library on the campus.
An inner membrane of translucent glass fibre filters the daylight and creates an atmosphere of concentration, while scattered transparent openings allow momentary views of the sky and glimpses of sunlight. The bookstacks are located at the centre of each floor, with reading desks arranged around the perimeter. Amusingly, the library’s cranial form has earned it a nickname of its own; ‘The Berlin Brain’.
The model was exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts summer show 2005, more recently in Calgary and in April 2006 at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
| Diane Oates, Senior Modelmaker for Foster and Partners says: "We have used SLS as a technique to produce components for our models in the past, and we felt that it would suit the scale and design of the structure for our model. SLS enables us to quickly incorporate complex geometric structures into our models, which would be extremely difficult to model by hand." |
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