The institute buildings ICT Cubes are part of a comprehensive urban planning concept for the long-term development of the RWTH’s different locations in Aachen. Two highly compact volumes surrounded by a maximum of green have been developed as a result of a feasibility study that was commissioned by the Building and Property Enterprise North Rhine-Westphalia (BLB NRW). The institutes have been arranged according to floors inside the two buildings. A joint functional and communicative zone has been created at the glass bridge connecting the two structural components. The core zone accommodates the service areas that are used by all the institutes, such as seminar, conference and social rooms. The design of the façade is intended to reinforce the effect of the two structures as “cubes in a park”. A parametric code was developed in cooperation with the user that translates quotes and maxims relevant to the institutes’ research into numerical code *. The code, consisting of the digits 0, 1 and 2, is the basis for the parametric façade model, in which each of these three digits is translated into one of three fin types. In this way, the shading device placed in front of the ribbon window façade acts as an information carrier for the represented departments and, at the same time, contributes towards the lively appearance of the characteristic exterior.
*Cost Constrained Geometric Huffman Coding developed by the Institute TI, Prof. Mathar with Georg Böcherer, Fabian Altenbach and Martina Malsbender (kadawittfeldarchitektur)