Garde Ulanen Kaserne, Haus 2-5

Project 8 :: 1997 / guk2 :: ::

Garde Ulanen Kaserne is an old heritage listed barracks complex in Potsdam. Originally built in the 19th century it was long occupied by the Russian army.

We worked on three buildings in this complex. Two were completed while the third one only got to council approvement.

Completed Building

The building was originally reconditioned for the office of the 'Bundesgartenshow', a famous nation wide garden exibition, as well as for the North Potsdam Town Planning office.

The building originally was a very long stable for horses of the army. Every arch was one stable. At this time the arches where just rectangled openings.

After replacing the horses with vehicles the doors where widened and reconstructed as arches.

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This image shows the offices on the ground floor. I designed the cupboards and my choice of natural oak industrial floor combined with a red carpet was accepted by the client. The desk were placed between the cupboards.

A little problem was that all doors or windows opened to the inside. They usually do in Germany.

The windows are steel not aluminium. To get the arch right was a big challenge for the manufacturer. Every arch was a bit different.

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The big meeting room.

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Old Door

An old door before reconditioning began.

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Blue Prints

This is a wire frame CAD render. We had the year 1996.

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This is the ground floor of a design I made for another part of the complex. A low budget hotel, like a upper class backpacker. Some rooms had to be wheel chair friendly.

I had the documentation and design finished and council had approved it. Unfortunatly a change in the law meant that the client couldn't afford the project anymore.

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Elevations of the part of the complex. It is very long but not very wide. This part still had the doors in rectangle shape.

Now as I think about it maybe the doors where arched and then made rectangle to fit in the army trucks.

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Simulation

This simulation of the building is made in the first edition of the unreal game engine. I was able to walk in real time through the building.

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The modeling abilities were very limited. I used material textures that came with the game.

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The engine supported transparency for the windows. I think I imported the wood texture for the doors.

The lighting engine was really good even in 1997

I am suprised that real time simulations are not more common for important projects. With the latest edition of unreal the simulation is very close to reality.

Link: HKS architects going real time 3D

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