The 172,000-square-foot roof that seems to hover over Coop Himmelb(l)au’s BMW Welt in Munich does more than keep out the elements. Together with the Double Cone—a 43-foot-tall, hourglass-shaped event and exhibition space—the wildly sculptural roof serves as the chief expressive element for the building, which functions as part automobile distribution center, part conference center, and part marketing tool.
The undulating, stainless-steel-clad roof is like a tornado with the glass-and-metal-mesh-enclosed Double Cone as its vortex. To achieve this effect, the designers conceived the enclosure of the event space as a framework shell made of horizontal rings, curved ascending profiles, and diagonals. All are steel tubes, rectangular in section. “A typical structure would have horizontal elements, vertical elements, and diagonals to brace it,” says Klaus Bollinger, principal of Bollinger+Grohmann Engineers, the project’s structural consultant. “But we only have horizontals and diagonals. Then we twisted them so the structure would seem dynamic,” he says.
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