Institute for Chemistry · University of Leipzig

University of Leipzig, New Institutes for Chemistry and conversion of student‘s hostel

Saxony State Prize for Architecture 2000 (closest choice)

New construction and conversion of the famous Institutes for Chemistry into a high-tech study centre in a park setting.

In 1994, the Free State of Saxony held a single-stage open urban-planning ideas and construction competition. As winners of the first prize, K+P were entrusted with the planning.
With the construction of a new chemistry department, the creation of a central library and the extension of the departments for physics and pharmacy, a centre of the natural sciences was to be established again within the “Linné triangle”.

The new buildings of the department of chemistry form a teaching and research facility used by roughly 1,000 young people, students and doctoral candidates. General areas such as lecture halls, seminar rooms and the library are housed in the two–storey linking tract. This tract, in the form of an access thoroughfare, opens towards the west into a tall steel-and-glass structure that affords views of the old trees outside.

The large lecture hall for experimental work marks the termination of this route. It is in the form of a quadrant with rendered walls and a sheet-steel roof.  An important aspect of the design was to establish a reciprocal relationship between indoors and outdoors.
Generous areas of glazing – extending over the full room height wherever possible - were designed to allow broad views of the trees from the internal spaces and to dematerialize the building.

Project facts and figures

• Location: Johannisallee 29, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
• Client: State of Saxony, Germany
• Planning and construction: 1995-1999
• Rehabilitation and conversion of student’s hostel: 1996-1999
• Scope of services: All planning stages from preliminary studies to site supervision
• Site area: 15,400 sqm
• Gross floor area:12,150 sqm
• Net floor area: 6,120 sqm
• Building cost: approx. 38 m. Euro