New Structures for Exhibition Buildings

In Summer 2007 the “BMW-World” in Munich, Germany was opened. It is a centre for entertainment for the public and for delivery of new cars to new customers. The whole building is a 90 by 180m wide cloud-like roof covering a big open space that serves as a kind of market place. The roof is a complex steel structure resting on the interior buildings used as restaurants and conference facilities. A significant steel tower shaped like a double-cone is also used as a support for the roof. This paper describes the difficulties and the solutions the planners had to face during planning and construction. The design of the building was developed during an architectural competition by the Vienna based architects COOP Himmelb(l)au Wolf Prix, Dieter Dreibholz and Partner accompanied by the Frankfurt based structural engineers Bollinger and Grohmann. The same team also won the competition for the new Science-Museum in Lyon, France. The museum is located right between the confluence of the river Saône into the river Rhône. That is where the name “Musée des Confluences” is derived from. The building has two parts: The transparent entrance and the opaque museum building being elevated above ground. Construction work for Musée des confluences started at the end of 2006 and completion should be in 2009.