Ian Ritchie, London with Isterling & Partner, Hamburg

Author
Ian Carl Ritchie Isterling und Partner: Gordon Evans
Co-Workers
Dana Bilek, Christophe Gerard, Igor Marko, Yasser Al-Saheal, Anthony Boulanger, Toby Smith, Susie Hyden, Jerome Berteloot, Wendy Ng
Experts
Büroorganisation: DEGW, London, United Kingdom. Philip Tidd, Despina Katsikakis Tragwerksplanung: ARUP, London, Cormac Deavy, Christian Brensing Haustechnik. Schmidt Reuter Partner, Köln, Hans-Jürgen Lemke

Remarks by the jury
This entry represents a current that might be labelled “poetic pragmatism,” as on the one hand it seeks to accomplish the task efficiently (quasi as an engineer would do), while on the other hand it makes various attempts at transposing the run-of-the-mill character of a manufacturing plant into the sphere of the “sublime.”
In doing so, out of architectural elements, all obvious appliqués, the authors deliberately create a stage setting. As regards the engineering part, the task has been accomplished mostly with diligence and elegance. The filigree suspended roof, the lighting gaps, the inserted glass bodies all bear witness of unquestionable technological competence and architectural finesse. The design’s modular structures and clear rationality promise straightforward feasibility.
In the end, it was the “poetic element” that provoked major conflict within the jury. Thus, the design’s noble understatement requires the use of exquisite materials and details that do not always fit within the frame set by financial constraints. Above that, a picture emerges with which to identify fully proved to be difficult for BMW. The somewhat detached poetry of the design comments seems to miss the intended goal of a communicative place of work. The proposed utilization and space concepts, though feasible, appear, however, only in parts to be novel. On the whole, this is a pleasantly restrained design of high architectural achievement that in the end, however, was not capable of convincing the jury in its entirety.