SW35 Office Building Facade Transformation / J. Mayer H. Architects

Our façade intervention of a nondescript nineteen-seventies-era office building in Stuttgart from dingy white to bold graphic patterns, reflects its current repurpose as an innovation lab. It is now a physical home for a group of startup companies working in the green tech sector, operating under the “umbrella” name 1886Ventures. The applied data protection pattern on the outside provides a symbolic location for these innovations that announces the new by referring to the tactics used to camouflage so-called “test mules,” testbed vehicles in the automotive industry. Drawing attention and keeping secrets are kept in an ambivalent balance.