Architect Joeseph Hammerl talks to Blinds & Shutters about an interesting college project he worked on in Aalen using a dense cladding of timber strips which form a shell around the buildings

The cubic forms house spaces for various courses offered by the University for Technical Studies and Economics: mechatronics, electronics, optics and information technology.  Three elongated volumes, two larger and one smaller, were laid out parallel to each other on the sloping ground. Extending from the central campus square is a tree-lined access route, which forms the heart of the complex and lends it a strong urban accent. This concourse may be seen as the main artery of a small "city of science" that will expand in the course of time.

What from afar seems to be a composition of contrasting light and dark areas, turns out to be a dense cladding of timber strips that completely enclose the fully glazed building. The facade elements, constructed in larch, establish a link with the nearby forest. The appearance of the facade changes with the position of the sun. In a closed state, the untreated louvred elements have a bright, reddish, shimmering surface. When the pivoting shutters are mechanically opened room by room, the darker areas of the glass to the rear are revealed, and the projecting edges of the shutters establish a pronounced sense of relief. The timber-clad narrower end faces of the buildings are completely closed. Here, a vertical recess indicates the internal structure.

Nothing should distract attention from the calm, self-contained, large-scale forms. The design of the internal spaces is consciously restricted to essentials. The exposed concrete soffits and the structural walls, contrasted with the white partitions, and the floor finishes in anthracite linoleum and stone from the region are juxtaposed with the warmer colours of the external wooden louvres over the room-height glazing.

One can also withdraw to the library, the smaller brother of the two faculty buildings. In the narrow south face of this structure there is an open loggia on all three floors, affording broad views over the bare upland landscape of the Eastern Alb.”