Text 3 Illuminating Foster

 

The young German artist Thomas Emde, whose medium is light and color, has just added the finishing touches to a Norman Foster building. The Commerzbank in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is said to be the world's first "ecological high-rise." With Emde's light installation, the special characteristics of the building are now as visible at night as they are during the day (Fig, 2.7).

Figure 2.7 - The light installation gives the impression of transparency to the building at night and during the day

 

The 53-story, 1000-foot (300-meter) tower, the highest office building in Europe, is triangular in plan. It features a central atrium that penetrates its entire height and four-story gardens that spiral around the perimeter.

Pairs of vertical masts, enclosing the corner cores, support eight-story Vierendeel trusses, which in turn support clear-span office floors. Not only are there no columns within the offices, but the Vierendeels also enable the gardens to be totally free of structure.

These gardens provide green views for the office workers and, in conjunction with the atrium, create natural ventilation for the entire building (Fig. 2.8). From a distance, the gardens give the tower an impression of transparency.

Figure 2.8 - Every office worker has a green view. In this case, down across the atrium to one of the gardens

 

It was this transparency that the award-winning Emde wished to emphasize in his lighting design. To this end, he installed indirect lighting in the gardens that gives them a distinctive, warm, yellow glow at night. He also uplit the upper facades of the building to accentuate the tower's verticality. The result has transformed the skyline of Frankfurt.

His studio, Blendwork, is a unique group of four professionals: The creative artist Emde, Peter Fischer, an art historian and project manager, Gunther Hecker, light designer, and Ralf Teuwen, light planning manager.

Blendwork also created "The Color Fleece," a large painting in the building's lobby. At 2300 square feet (210 square meters), it is reputedly the largest painting in the world. What the viewer sees in the painting depends on the viewer's position and changes with the light throughout the day. In a monograph describing the process of creating this painting, Emde wrote about the building:

"Unlike the other towers [in Frankfurt], the building by Norman Foster executes a new double movement. On the one hand, the building reaches up apparently endlessly to the sky, seemingly lifting up from the ground and departing from it (Fig.2.9).. At the same time, it lifts nine gardens up into the heights.

Figure 2.9 - A view to the top from inside the atrium

 

"The building takes whole trees with it, removing plants from the ground, with its connotations of closeness to nature and roots in the soil. This reflects the duality of the building, for as trees always strive upwards and grow towards and into the light, so also does the tower.

"In this way, the Commerzbank building modifies the simple law of roots in the soil. Nature is a simulated living space floating in the heights, reflecting the duality of the tower. The building replaces the necessity to root the trees in the earth, by taking them up and growing with them towards the light."