walls, equally likely to be read as non-load-bearing cladding as structure,
contrast with the explicitly exposed structure at the Licorne stadium,
Amiens, that similarly engenders perceptions of protection and enclos-
ure (see Fig. 3.13).
The exterior structure of the Öhringen Business School represents
the antithesis of the symmetry and calmness of the Fitzwilliam College
Chapel. Outside the main entrance the exterior structure breaks long
established traditions of structural order and rationality (Fig. 4.36). In
front of a glazed wall, three cross-braced buttresses appear to be quite
haphazardly orientated – their alignment neither relating to the building
envelope nor to the interior structure. A similarly unusual relationship
exists between the buttresses and the thin steel girts they support.
The normal hierarchy of mullions supported by girts that are in turn
supported by buttresses is subverted. A girt passes through a buttress
without being able to transfer its loads to it (Fig. 4.37).
Exterior structure in this area of the school appears ad hoc and crude.
Blundell-Jones notes that this aesthetic is in fact carefully developed and
a ‘confident use of a vocabulary elaborated over decades’.^9 The archi-
tect, Behnisch, is well known for his colliding geometries, layered spaces
and careening volumes. Upon entering the atrium, a fragmented and
layered structural language contributes to a light and lively, if not exciting,
interior space.
72 STRUCTURE AS ARCHITECTURE
▲ 4.35 Fitzwilliam College Chapel, Cambridge, England, Richard MacCormac, 1991.
A chapel side-wall with an accommodation block to the left.
