Betzenmühle / Plößberg, Germany

Designed by Brückner & Brückner Architekten, together with landscape architects realgrün Landschaftsarchitekten, this near corporate office and headquarters for the Ziegler Group, rises from out of the ground in the midst of a forest glade, the home to one of Europe’s largest sawmills.

The new office is an interplay of light, shade and wood and rooted in the forest.

The new home for the central administration of the Ziegler Group, in the very place where the success story of the family company began, a story that was forged with the Betzenmühle sawmill.

Built out of the very material the company works with every day. Our architecture is the essence of the company, the Ziegler work environment, its products and its philosophy.

Today, the Ziegler Group is a globally operating family company with its headquarters in Betzenmühle / Plößberg in the Upper Palatinate region. Its core business activities are within the field of wood processing.

The company group’s business divisions also include logistics, mechanical engineering, software development, forest management, interior design and the construction of prefabricated houses, with quite a few locations and approximately 1400 employees.

In the search for a suitable location in the forest surrounding the sawmill, that architects, together with the builders, asked: what exactly do we want growing here, and where?

And they found the perfect spot: at the highest point of the plot, where forest and production space intersect. After engaging in collective workshops, an idea was born:

The architects took the earliest product from the Ziegler product range, a tree stem of spruce soaring 19 meters high and build a house from it.

From the outside, you can almost hear the musical score of the Ziegler products playing in unison, a rhythmic procession of logs surrounding the building like lines of musical notes.

The wood serves as a natural filter, both from the inside and outside, with additional shade thanks to a textile that provides protection from the sun, and at the core, a façade made of glass, wood and metal.

The two cubes are raised up with felling cuts, like the stem of a tree, with two inner courtyards between them. Each employee has their own window.

This concept is continued throughout the structure’s interior, the quality of the wood becomes increasingly more refined and the house makes all subsequent steps in the processing of the wood visible, from the raw wood of the counters to the refined wooden surfaces of the office furniture.

Wood in its complete diversity, exemplified in the quality, grade and color.

The new administrative building is a pure wood construction with cross-laminated timber walls and covers, and two exposed concrete emergency staircases made with brushed raw plug casing.

The architects also wanted to consequently create innovative new ways to implement wood as a building material and to find modern solutions for its use.

The house connects forms identity and creates the perfect work atmosphere – where all facets of the creative process, from administration to production, are always transparent and accessible.

It was important to the builders that everyone works together, in a space of communication and
transparency, a space with perspective and accessibility to other colleagues and to the surrounding
forest.

In addition to a showroom, the offices for some 120 employees, meeting rooms and a loggia, there is also a restaurant for employees and a guest casino, all connected by a wooden spiral staircase.

Images that most inspire us: The house illuminates the forest night like a wooden lantern, the people in it like fireflies in constant motion.

With every year that goes by, the daylight imbues the façade with a beautiful patina. And like a beacon, it shines in all directions, as if conscious of its significant purpose and place in space and time.

Project: Ziegler Group Corporate Offices and Headquarterss, Ploessberg
Architects: Brückner & Brückner Architekten
Design Team: Peter Brückner, Christian Brückner, Stephan Graebner and Tobias Lippert
Engineering: Riedl Holzbau, Waldthurn
Structural engineering: Bodensteiner & Partner, Weiden
Heating ventilation sanitary: Gruenwald & Ach, Weiden
Electrical engineering: EAS Systems, Neustadt a.d.Waldnaab
Fire protection: DAI Dorn Architekten, Munich
Landscape Architects: realgrün Landschaftsarchitekten, Munich
Client: Ziegler Holzindustrie GmbH & Co. KG
Photographers: Oliver Heinl, mju-fotografie