Plant extension window factory, Hagendorn-Cham/Switzerland

First prizeGerman Landscape Architecture Award 2007

Jury verdict: A plant extension of 18,000 square metres, almost three football pitches, which pushes the edge of the village out into the landscape. An everyday situation, all the more explosive from a planning point of view, the higher the quality of the adjacent cultural landscape.
In the contribution presented, the situation is accepted as a challenge for architects, developers and the municipality. The result is a plant extension as a built cultural landscape chamber. The formative elements of the landscape space - meadow and hedge - enter into correspondence; in other words: with the building, the landscape is built on.

The flat building received as extensive roof greening a site-typical whistling grass meadow. This alone is not an exceptional solution, but in combination with the hedge architecture, planted with typical local wild shrubs, a facade-high vegetation wall, which leads as a hybrid dialogue between architecture and landscape.

Here is no "way greening", but a self-confident and at the same time restrained entry of the building into the landscape. The jury considers this project to be a high-quality and contemporary contribution to the theme of designing the edge of a town with commercial buildings.