Schüco: A versatile and flexible office building in Cologne

11/10/2022 | Print view

K8 is a six-storey office newbuild at Deutz harbour in Cologne. Its special feature is an L-shaped floor plan with rounded corners. - © Schüco International KG — © Schüco International KG

K8 is a six-storey office newbuild at Deutz harbour in Cologne. Its special feature is an L-shaped floor plan with rounded corners.

As a rental office property, the newly built K8 building in Cologne Deutz provides a high degree of flexibility. And Schüco floor-to-ceiling windows and doors provide daylight, access and ventilation.

The office spaces of the K8 office complex can be easily adapted to their respective needs by the tenants. The flexibility of the floor plan is also mirrored in the facade, where covered exterior walkways stretch across all of the upper storeys above an exposed concrete base level. These walkways give outside access to every office.

Deutz Port is one of the current areas of urban development in the city of Cologne. The plans for this district are based on the “Cologne City Centre” urban master plan designed by the Albert Speer und Partner architecture firm from Frankfurt am Main.

Part of a diverse urban landscape

For this building, they envisaged a conversion that would conserve land and resources. In terms of urban development, the district is heterogeneous. In some parts, there are closed city blocks, in others there are large-scale stand-alone buildings.

One particular feature is that Deutz Port also serves as a flood retention area. The underground car parks in the district can therefore be flooded in case of flooding of the Rhine River. The same is true of the K8 office building in Kaltenbornweg 8.

In K8, each office has its own access to the exterior walkways via Schüco PVC-U floor-to-ceiling window doors. These provide plenty of daylight and natural ventilation. All of the profiles have a dark metallic grey design.

Schüco floor-to-ceiling windows give access to exterior walkways

The floor plan of the building is very flexible and that is also mirrored in the facade. The floor-to-ceiling windows of each workspace provide access to the exterior walkways. The offices therefore benefit from being flooded with natural light, which is known to increase concentration and performance. The windows can also be used to ventilate the rooms naturally.

While the ground floor and top storey of the K8 building have a punched facade with oak windows, the five floors in between have been fitted with PVC-U windows from the Schüco LivIng series with an 82 mm basic depth in dark, metallic grey. The 7-chambered profiles give Schüco LivIng 82 AS passive house-level thermal insulation values.