Designed by Birk Heilmeyer und Frenzel Architekten, Ernsting’s family is branch enterprise of the textile industry based in the Coesfeld Lette (Westphalia). Continuous growing of the enterprise led to new buildings, which supplement the existing distribution centre of Santiago Calatrava and Bruno Reichlin from the early 1980s. Architect Johannes Schilling added another distribution centre in 1999. The company?s new service centre designed by David Chipperfield was completed in 2001. All buildings are situated in a green campus, for which the Belgian landscape architect Peter Wirtz is responsible.
Photography: Christian Richters
In the year 2003 the young German architects Liza Heilmeyer and Stephan Birk won the architectural competition for yet another building on the company?s campus: a multi-storey car park with 500 parking bays for the mainly female employees of Ernsting’s family.
At the western border of the campus, with distance to the distribution centre the new, in two equal large parts arranged parking garage is placed. The ensemble of existing business buildings is completed with the new linear structure; it defines the border of the Campus to the adjacent residential area.
Photography: Christian Richters
The form of the two parts of structure results from the system of two parking ramps. The two identical, mirror-symmetric building parts complement each other on the inside [circular driving] as well as on the outside. Due to this selected system it wa...