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.

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 as 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.

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.