The new Sedus Stoll AG Development and Innovation Centre in Dogern (Hochrhein) completed at the end of 2010. With this building which was planned by the Berlin-based architects Ludloff + Ludloff, the internationally renowned manufacturer of office furniture has taken another step towards transferring its remaining departments from the company's historical headquarters in Waldshut to its main production location. Thanks to the proximity to the production departments, designers, engineers and staff in the model workshops can now optimally exploit synergies when developing new products. Located directly next to the high-bay warehouse designed by the architects at Sauerbruch Hutton, this introverted building which is enveloped in a facade made of glass fibre fabric can appear either transparent and tulle-like or opaque and smooth depending on the intensity of the sunlight.

Thanks to its scale and volume, the development and innovation centre forms a link between the residential area situated on the western outskirts of Dogern and Sedus Stoll AG's company premises.

The western entrance facade's spatial rotation serves to connect the administration's entrance situation with the main entrance to the site. The building's manifestly "simple" sculptural form, which owing to the facade design is perceived as "veiled", purposefully sets the actual experience of space in the context of the high-bay warehouse's pictorial appearance.

The facade's all-round textile cladding, made up of two separate layers of upright trapezoid panels, suggests a coated, thinly veiled body and evokes a space completely "wrapped" in fabric. Where the translucent cladding elements overlap, they create, depending on the light and the angle of view, various levels of transparency that add an almost immaterial lightness to the building. A concrete staircase leads from the foyer to the first floor which is designed as an open-plan "single-room" space encasing one "core conference room". The soffit of the folded roof becomes a bent wall that reaches all the way down to the strip window, with the roof itself appearing to float above.