SHA Scheffler Helbich Architekten GmbH
Phoenixplatz 3
44263 Dortmund
When nursery owner Fritz Hark grew his first orchid at home in 1949, he never dreamed that his children would develop his father’s nursery into the second largest orchid nursery in Europe, selling its cuttings all over the world.
The company, which clones up to a million cuttings from a single mother plant on behalf of its customers, no longer has much to do with its father’s gardening business – although it still draws on the latter’s experience and growing medium mixture . Rather, it is a highly technical clean air laboratory that moved into the new building in 2000 with ten employees and three years later already employed over 150 people.
The most important feature of the design is the phased expansion and step-by-step extension, which is coordinated with the three-year cloning process and can take place just-in-time. With each additional orchid generation, a further cultivation and laboratory section can be created.
The building is divided into two areas that can develop independently of each other in terms of depth and width of the plot, starting from the semi-public administrative and social areas.
While the laboratory and research area in the north can grow to the east, the necessary cultivation facilities will be extended to the south. Unlike the administration area, this area is not accessible to visitors and is separated from the entrance area by a clear wall.
Hark’s production and laboratory building in Lippstadt is a building complex that combines the highest demands of a serial production, manufacturing and storage process with the highly installed areas of an aseptic and user-friendly laboratory.
Short distances, freedom from maintenance, targeted alternation between natural lighting and artificially controllable lighting, as well as precise compliance with laboratory and workplace guidelines play a decisive role. In this way, the architecture offers a restrained working atmosphere in which the careful and clean process of orchid reproduction is always in the foreground.
Phoenixplatz 3
44263 Dortmund