Hydro-electric power station , Kempten, Germany

Hydro-electric power station , Kempten, Germany
 This hydro-electric power station on the River Iller at Kempten, a large town around 110km southwest of Munich, Germany, is sculptural in the extreme.
 

 
__It appears to float on the water as an amorphous form, both gentle and dynamic, that you could regard, metaphorically, as a sea creature come to the surface from the deep, or maybe a flowing, swelling mass of water frozen in time. The reality is that its architects, becker architekten, were inspired by the massive eroded rock formations commonly found in the Allgauer alpine region not far from the town.
__Cast wholly in concrete, the sensuous, snaking form of the new power station replaces an ageing building from the 1950s, and sits adjacent to a couple of heritage-listed 19th century mills, now converted into apartments. The plant, which produces enough power to provide electricity to 3,000 homes, was initially planned by specialist energy engineers, RMD Consult. becker architekten were then briefed to give the building its form.
__The resultant design is dynamic; linking the two ends of the structure within a single envelope, essentially a reinforced concrete shell measuring 100 metres long by 23 metres wide "floating" in the middle of the river, harnessing water at one end, passing it through turbines and disgorging it back into the river at the other end. "That was our contribution," one of its principal architects, Michael Becker, says. "Our role was to combine an ensemble of individual structural elements and turn them into a building and give it shape, like an organism that could exist opposite the industrial buildings as a large sculpture, formed in stone and making references the dynamics of the water and its power to erode – a building that rises up out of the water and which metaphorically continues the water landscape."
__In a dance of contrasts, the power station can be read on two levels. Externally, its flowing form consists of a six piece three-dimensionally curved reinforced concrete shell. Almost perfectly smooth, the surface was spray-coated with a highly flexible, waterproof polyurethane coating laced with a fine grit of river sand, to create a reflective, iridescent finish that changes constantly with ambient light and weather patterns.
__The interior of the shell was shuttered with rough-sawn boards and stabilised with concrete ribs placed at four-metre intervals, lending it a skeletal feeling. The finish is deliberately rough, abrasive, shadowy and grey; board markings and joints are exposed; and the smooth tension-filled skin of the exterior shell is seen reverse, with a varied sequence of open and cramped, high and low spaces. The ceiling pulsates between dome-like proportions and intimate scale. With the rhythm of the reinforcing concrete ribs, the impression is decidedly one of entering inside the hull of a giant wooden ship.
__The shell rests on slide bearings, with a two centimetre gap between it and the power station structure, capable of compensating for differences in longitudinal stresses. To minimise disruptions to the flow of the outer form of the plant, the architects kept openings in the shell to a minimum. A lightweight concrete section, removable by mobile crane, enables teams of workers to remove drifting debris that may accumulate beneath the shell.
__Aside from its aesthetic delights, conserving the river's ecology became an important consideration during the power station's design. With the potential that such a large structure in the river could impede natural fish migration patterns, a 46-metre "fish ladder" was installed below the water line to help reduce any barrier effect, allowing them to move upstream assisted by a series of low concrete steps. In another gesture at preserving the river's history, a steel cable bridge, one of five such bridges spanning the river around this point, was able to be retained simply by "sliding" the concrete shell beneath it.
__With images of river pebbles, rounds, pools, edges, overhangs in mind, 50 models were created – in scale from 1:500 to a 1:50 working model the size of a small dinner table – before arriving at the final form of the shell. Dimensions were taken from the final model and a 3D model was created using a special computer program, with continual feedback from the engineers, corrections and improvements. "Decisive in our thinklng, however, was that we tried try to understand the wave, how it rolls in, unfurls, rises up, is diverted, spins, whirls, foams, dissolves itself and merges back into the river," says Michael Becker. - - Joe Rollo
Project: Hydro-electric power station, Kempten, Germany
Location: Keselstraße 14 a, D – 87435 Kempten / Allgaeu, Bavaria, Germany
Architecture: becker architekten, Kempten
Project team: Michael Becker, Bernhard Kast, Franz G. Schroeck
Structural engineer (underground): RMD Consult, Munich
Structural engineer (building): Konstruktionsgruppe Bauen, Kempten
Mechanical engineering: VA_Tech Escher Wyss GmbH, Ravensburg
Photographer: Brigida Gonzalez
Dr. EMAD HANI ISMAEEL
                 Ph.D. in Technologies for the Exploitation
                 of the Cultural Heritage .
                 Senior Lecturer in the Dept. of Architecture

                 College of Engineering , University of Mosul 
                 Mosul - Iraq .
E-mail:        emadhanee@yahoo.com
                   emadhanee@gmail.com
                   http://emadhani.blogspot.com/
Tel :           +964 (0)770 164 93 74

 

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