Ekris Headlights

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Copyright Rob Hoekstra.

Copyright Rob Hoekstra.

Copyright Rob Hoekstra.

Copyright Rob Hoekstra.

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Location

2007

Realized

Utrecht Leidsche Rijn

Netherlands

Facts

Year: 2007

Typology: Industrial, Office, Retail

City: Utrecht Leidsche Rijn

Country: Netherlands

Client: Ekris Utrecht B.V.

Team:

Lead designers: Kas Oosterhuis, Ilona Lénárd
Project architect: Gijs Joosen
Design team: Ronald Brandsma, Pim Marsman, Bas de Beer, Paulina Gurak, Rafael Seemann, David Milam, Gerard van den Engel, Sanne Plomp

Partners:

Main contractor: Bouwonderneming van Bekkum, Hooglanderveen.
Steel structure: Meijers Staalbouw BV, Serooskerke.
Glass façade: Absoluut Glastechniek, Venlo

Tag That Body: Architecture

Shape That Body: Automotive styling, CNC manufacturing, Diagrid, File to factory, Lean BIM, Nonstandard, Parametric, Scripting, The new beauty, Mass customization

http://www.autodesk.fr/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=16883979

Ekris Headlights was awarded the Autodesk BIM Experience Award for its use of Building Information Modeling [BIM]

Description

Spending much of our precious time in the traffic jams it is a pleasure to analyze the automotive styling of the top marques. The way automotive lighting is integrated in car body design is triggers the interest of the non standard designer. From stand-alone lamps attached to a carriage they have undergone a revolution to fully integrated body parts.

For the Ekris Headlights showroom we took our inspiration from the E60 5 series headlight. The glass facade is cutting the corner of the main shape to form a smooth transition of the building body. The client immediately understood the concept.

The twin buildings of the Ekris Headlights form an ensemble with the A2 Cockpit. Being part of the initial Automotive Masterplan, the A2 Cockpit is oriented along the A2 highway. The two mirrored volumes of the BMW showrooms complement the coherent image on the Proostwetering, with a subtle reference to BMW's characteristic double-kidney grille.

The design for the Ekris BMW showroom is in all styling aspects a three-dimensionally shaped volume like the modern car body itself. The structure of the two buildings closely follows the architectural styling. As a consequence each building component is unique in shape and size. By using mass-customization production methods based on our signature file to factory production process we garantee that the quality, precision and building costs remain close to standard.

Architecture must learn from the evolution of car bodies. In the ninteen thirties cars were still coaches on top of a chassis, much like buildings being a loose set of components on top of the foundation. Cars evolved into monocoque structures, unibody desings, preciously folded and shaped as to integrate a variety of functional organs, wiring and cladding materials. Now it is the architects turn build unibodies, utilizing power lines to shape and stylize their designs without losing its structural integrity.