The Phaeno Science center is the product of a radical design innovation that utilised digital animation as a conceptualisation tool for the spatial diagram of the building and it's content. In many ways a predecessor of parametric design, it first explored the methods for parametric engagement with architectural form and matter.
The idea of the project, to intensify event-density as a means of producing the spatial-functional diagram and the physical manifestation of a monolithic concrete surface that deforms to create space and structure as an indivisible form. Characterised by conical shaped legs that release the space below the building, an unexpected spatial reality is generated below the building of an aesthetic intent equal to the interior of the building.
The building is designed to invariably respond to the different contexts around the site; the railway lines, the Autostadt, the historical axis of the city and the city itself. Each facade unfolds in a differentiated manner.
The interior of the project, an interiorised landscape is the exhibition space where the crater-like spaces generated from the conceptual studies as surfaces deformed simultaneously under a field of forces, that become the programmatic generators for the exhibition workshops. The open flow arrangement enhances the learning experience since all exhibits are at once open to view, hinting to a particular pedagogical paradigm that is free of dogmatism and encourages a research based approach to learning.