Berlin University of the Arts

Music courses offered by the Berlin University of the Arts are often held in a neoclassical building on Bundesallee, a venue recently extended by adding twin pavilions in the inner courtyard. This addition was the work of TRU Architekten and it gives the faculty 14 new rooms, including numerous practice rooms for the students and two rooms with grand pianos.

The metallic façade cladding chosen for both volumes was created with TECU^® Gold, a special new copper and gold alloy from KME that not only stands out for its durability and resistance to the elements, but also for being entirely recyclable. The practice opted for this solution partly because of the material’s impressive technical performance, but also because of its look, where the perforations and the gilded hue that remains unchanged over time provide a perfect match for the historical brickwork in which shades of terracotta and ochre are interwoven. The original building has a decidedly neoclassical imprint with two orders, each rising two floors, in which the horizontal development dominates, although the arched windows on the upper floors bring a touch of difference. As a counterpoint to this, the copper façade is markedly vertical with a “ripple fold” effect, a fairly evident reference to the curtains that hang inside the rooms as part of the sound-dampening solutions.

Indeed, one of the most challenging aspects was precisely to achieve the required levels of sound insulation. The core of both pavilions are pre-fabricated wooden structures that are acoustically decoupled. The glulam wooden panels for the internal walls are also partially sound-proofed using fiber cement siding panels, while the exterior walls have a double skin with an air gap. The metallic cladding was then mounted on an aluminum substructure. The edges of the individual panels are almost invisible to the naked eye, creating the impression of a continuous façade that vibrates with sunlight in the day, but then takes on a different tone when the ground-lighting comes on at night.