Two large com­pa­nies have their head­quar­ters at Auf­bau Haus: the Auf­bau Ver­lag Pub­lish­ing House and Mod­u­lor, a ma­te­ri­al's provider which, as Planet Mod­u­lor, pro­vides ad­di­tional ser­vices to the cre­ative and craft in­dus­tries in the build­ing. The ar­eas of ac­tiv­ity of the two main ten­ants – writ­ing and ma­te­ri­als – pro­vided the start­ing points for the de­sign of the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem. Moni­teurs’ idea was that the ar­ti­sans of Planet Mod­u­lor should be in­volved in the cre­ation process.

In May 2005, the new BMW plant in Leipzig be­gan pro­duc­tion. The heart of the plant is the cen­tral build­ing, de­signed by Lon­don ar­chi­tect Zaha Ha­did, around which the pro­duc­tion halls are loosely grouped. Not by chance has Zaha Ha­did’s build­ing won sev­eral awards: not only does it form the com­mu­nica­tive cen­tre of the plant, con­nect­ing all ar­eas by the short­est route and, through its trans­parency, pro­vide a space for ex­changes and meet­ings. Rather, the staff work­ing in the cen­tral build­ing are also di­rectly in­te­grated into the pro­duc­tion: high above their desks, the car bod­ies pass silently through the cen­tral build­ing on long con­veyor belts, from one stage of pro­duc­tion to the next.

The sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy com­pany Merck is ex­pand­ing its Darm­stadt site into a global head­quar­ters. The his­toric in­dus­trial site is turn­ing into a “Merck City”: state-of-the-art in­fra­struc­ture, a new In­no­va­tion Cen­ter and new, mod­ern pro­duc­tion and of­fice build­ings cre­ate an in­no­v­a­tive work­ing en­vi­ron­ment for over 10,000 em­ploy­ees. In ad­di­tion, the fam­ily busi­ness cel­e­brated its 350-year an­niver­sary at the cen­tral, re­designed Emanuel-Merck-Platz in May 2018!

In close co­op­er­a­tion (what we call co-cre­at­ing!) with Merck and the ar­chi­tec­ture of­fice HENN, who de­vel­oped a mas­ter plan for the plant and planned the In­no­va­tion Cen­ter, Moni­teurs de­signed an over­ar­ch­ing ori­en­ta­tion con­cept: out­door and in­door sig­nage as strong brand el­e­ments serve as ori­en­ta­tion on the Merck plant.