The basis for the new structure was the historic brick building of the Schwarzenberg barracks. This monumental building is preceded by a campus of 14 buildings belonging to the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg, one of the “youngest” in Germany: it was founded in 1980.
The new main building of the university, where 5,000 students study and 1,150 teachers and researchers work, houses the administration premises, lecture and seminar rooms, as well as a knowledge and communication center open to students 24 hours a day (we are talking about a modern analogue of the library).
The barracks are based on a classic Palladian composition with three projections. In place of the connecting wings, which were badly damaged during the Second World War, glass cubes of new premises appeared. The historical parts, which have the status of a monument, have retained their structure - with the exception of the central volume, where an atrium was arranged in a height of three floors, and the entrances were made in the form of huge glazed arches.
The glass facades of the new parts of the building are covered with aluminum tubes and stainless steel cables, fixed on horizontal beams with a U-shaped section. Together they form the code motive so popular in modern architecture: in this case, the vertical lines convey the name of the university in Morse code - Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg.
N. F.
