Rising over 800 feet in a Medieval town in southwest Germany, ThyssenKrupp Test Tower is difficult to miss. In 2013, the multinational industrial conglomerate needed a facility to experiment with a rope-free high-speed elevator. Architects Helmut Jahn and Werner Sobek (who is also a structural engineer) responded to the call but insisted that the project also enhance its surroundings and provide a public service. “Given the beautiful landscape around Rottweil, it was clear to us from the beginning that the tower had to be more than just a technical structure,” says Sobek. The 69-foot-diameter reinforced-concrete tube houses the test facility at its center and is topped by an observation deck. The distinctive textile membrane shrouding the structure—which was completed earlier this year—is made of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), and was designed to minimize thermal loads and deflect wind eddies to prevent oscillations that can occur during testing. And, as an object in the landscape, “the tower creates a new landmark,” says Jahn. “It enriches and continues the city’s history.”
Thyssenkrupp Test Tower by Werner Sobek with Helmut Jahn
Rottweil, Germany
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Photo © Rainer Viertlböck
The Thyssenkrupp Test Tower
August 21, 2018
The Thyssenkrupp test tower does not enhance the landscape around Rottweil Germany. On the contrary it presents a major injury to it. This structure resembles nothing so much as a theme park ride with its torsaded bright white plastic exterior cladding. There was no need to make this another show-off building by another egotistic Starchitect. It clashes with the beautiful organic natural environment in which it is set. There is no connection to the surroundings, no connection with the culture of the area, no connection with the history and personality of its residents. There is no indication of scale or fine-grained detail to make it more humanistic. This is just another of the many many academically dictated self-serving egomaniacal 'Object' buildings that is perpetrated by a leading architect and his slavish architecture critics. It would have been better to erect an engineered structure that reflects the necessary functional and structural requirements for the test tower. If you wanted to imbue it with an architectural quality it would need a more brilliant and inspired designer who could synthesize the functional, structural and aesthetic aspects of the program. This will become in the not too distant future an generally loathed eyesore that will annoy the local inhabitants for years to come until its much needed demise.