The FIZ Re­search and In­no­va­tion Cen­tre in Mu­nich is the heart of the world­wide re­search and de­vel­op­ment net­work of the BMW Group. Built in 1986, the area has grown con­sid­er­ably, ex­pand­ing into the sur­round­ing ur­ban space and be­com­ing more com­pact in or­der to pro­vide space for the ap­prox­i­mately 25,000 peo­ple who work there. In 2015, HENN de­vel­oped a mas­ter­plan to of­fer a vi­sion up to the year 2050. More trans­par­ent, bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion, di­rect routes and con­nec­tions to the city quar­ters should cre­ate op­ti­mal con­di­tions for the fu­ture, a cre­ative at­mos­phere which favours the in­no­va­tion and in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary na­ture of the fields – or­gan­ised along a cen­tral axis.

The new build­ing of the Pots­dam In­sti­tute for Cli­mate Im­pact Re­search is sit­u­ated on Telegrafen­berg hill in Pots­dam, a his­toric and in­ter­na­tion­ally sig­nif­i­cant sci­ence lo­ca­tion. The build­ing was de­signed by BH­BVT Ar­chi­tects, who de­signed it in such a way that it fits har­mo­niously into the sur­round­ing for­est. It con­sists only of flow­ing forms, and a cir­cu­lar atrium binds to­gether the three round sec­tions of the build­ing. Since Oc­to­ber 2015, 200 sci­en­tists from all over the world have been con­duct­ing re­search here. Moni­teurs adopted and strength­ened the colour con­cept of the ar­chi­tec­ture and the en­cod­ing of the three build­ing sec­tions into the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem with var­i­ous bright colours and an as­so­cia­tive nomen­cla­ture. The icon-based ground plan cov­ers all floors and serves as a colour marker, pro­vid­ing con­sid­er­able ori­en­ta­tion aid within the sym­met­ri­cal space.

In ad­di­tion to the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tems, Moni­teurs de­vel­oped in­ter­faces for touch pan­els to con­trol me­dia and room tech­nics in the new In­no­va­tion Cen­ter at the Merck Cam­pus. These con­trol sys­tems were mounted in meet­ing rooms and co-work­ing spaces, as well in the restau­rant, and had to ful­fil dif­fer­ent needs and re­quire­ments, for in­stance to con­trol the mu­sic in the restau­rant or to start a pre­sen­ta­tion in one of the meet­ing rooms.

At Merck's head­quar­ters in Darm­stadt, pro­duc­tion, re­search and ad­min­is­tra­tion are con­cen­trated on an area of 1.25 square kilo­me­ters. A road net­work 36 kilo­me­ters long con­nects more than 400 build­ings. 11,000 em­ploy­ees, de­liv­ery traf­fic and vis­i­tors come and go here every day. Our con­cept of the ad­di­tive sys­tem, which was al­ready in­stalled in the In­no­va­tion Cen­ter in 2017, has now been trans­lated into the out­door area.