Viadrina Coworking space, Frankfurt (Oder), Allemagne

The existing building "Alte Mensa" with basement and ground floor is part of a coherent, three-part building complex with student dormitory and Audimax. The three building parts were built at the end of the 1970s as a SED district party school in skeleton construction. In the 1990s, the building was converted into a hotel and congress center. At the turn of the millennium, the European University Viadrina took over the building and used it as a refectory.
The upcoming conversion into a coworking space will provide students, researchers and external stakeholders with a space for communication and collaboration. Thus, the new building function can be summarized with the three keywords "meeting", "learning" and "founding".
The present design is characterized by seven so-called light and climate boxes, which are cut into the comparatively deep ground floor plan and which naturally light and ventilate the interior common areas. The structural conditions mean that there is no need for mechanical, central ventilation in the perimeter of the storey. The ventilation, comfort and energy concepts developed had to be adapted to the architecture, the local site factors, the climatic conditions, the building type and, last but not least, the high flexibility requirements as part of the preliminary and design planning.
Essential concept elements are, in addition to the incised climate and light boxes, thermally activated floor surfaces with heating / cooling function, ceiling fans. In addition, there is CO2-controlled ventilation, which is provided towards the boxes via ventilated facade elements with heating/cooling function. At the perimeter, manually controllable façade flaps are provided for gap and intensive ventilation, as well as parapet radiators.
All glazed envelope surfaces are equipped with motorized, external solar shading reefing blinds. Transsolar also carried out analyses with dynamic thermal simulations and daylight simulations to accompany the planning process.