Project Details

  • Construction Date

    2016

  • Location

    Berlin, DE 2016

  • Categories:

BIZ - New Visitor and Information Center of the German Bundestag

Berlin, DE, 2016

Name: BIZ – New Visitor and Information Center of the German Bundestag
Organizer: Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBR)
Project Typology: Institutions
Location: Berlin, DE
Year: 2016
Competition Typology: Open
Stage: single stage
Cost (estimated): € 50’000’000
Firm: B+D+M Architetti
Alex Braggion
Proap Italia
Designers: Alex Braggion
Gian Paolo Di Benedetto
Orazio Basso
Alessandro Simonato
Contributors: Samantha Minozzi
Annalisa Bertan

The BIZ (Neubau Besucher und Inromationszentrum des Deutschen Bundestages) is a public building in the center of Berlin. It takes the form of a glass pavilion nestled among the trees of the Tiergarten. Its iconicity is given by the strongly abstract feature of the form and the materials. It is presented as a parallelepiped volume arranged parallelly to Scheidemannstraße; it spreads on two floors above ground – with a height of 10 meters on the sides – and on a basement. The height does not exceed the average of the Tiergarten trees, thus ensuring a real integration of the building in the park. The entrance to the BIZ is clearly identified by a very long portal that covers the entire system of eight accesses. In the same position, in the basement, there is the entrance to the tunnel connecting the Reichstag. This choice allows the interior space to be developed as a sequence built around the visitor flow, which moves east-west on the ground floor and in the opposite direction to the basement.

The triple-height foyer is the beating heart of the BIZ: thanks to the exposed stair system the flow of visitors between the various levels takes on plastic evidence, thus becoming a dynamic and attractive element. The Plenarforum volume emerges from the roof with a glazed structure that allows natural light to enter. Thanks to this emerging volume, which at night turns into a lantern, the Plenarforum maintains a dialogue at a distance with the dome of the Reichstag, from which it is visible. The BIZ is characterized by an image of lightness conferred by the glass coating. Two types of glass are used: transparent glass for the areas that relate to the outside and translucent glass, obtained from recycled glass, for the service areas. The design of the landscape surrounding the BIZ takes into account the strongly iconic context, and seeks dialogue using the same language.