It proved possible to open part of the new multi-storey car park of the Karstadt branch in Hesse’s Bad Homburg shortly before last year’s Christmas shopping spree. The construction work was completed on the remaining parking levels in the first half of 2016 with the result that the city centre is richer by a further 485 new parking places.
It takes a second glance to see that this new structure is really a multi-storey car park. This is because aic Architekten und Ingenieur-Consult GmbH incorporated three different facade types into their design so that the huge new building blended harmoniously into the city-scape. The contract for the manufacture, supply and erection of the architectural concrete facade components in high-quality exposed concrete was placed with Hering Architectural Concrete. The team skilfully turned the architects’ demanding design, which required three different concrete mixes in each finished part, into reality.
Although horizontal grey members and white window frame elements extend over the entire length of the building, the appearance of the façade surface changes. A brown facade with concealed horizontal joints forms the facade in the region of the entrance but the façade colour then shades off into a light grey. A red brick façade was specified for the area of the spiral staircases. But Hering Architectural Concrete was also able to find a solution here, and in the works clad the precast concrete components with the same red bricks which were also used on site for the cast in-situ concrete plinths.
The last hurdle to be overcome was the assembly and erection of a total of 104 precast concrete components as the car park was basically a steel structure. The architectural concrete facade was therefore designed not as a curtain facade but as a stacked facade. Hering Architectural Concrete demonstrated once again the versatility of architectural concrete as a construction material.
