Mannheim Multihalle Analysis

The city of Mannheim in Germany was one of the greatest industrial hubs of the time: creativity and innovation was at its peak. Because of this, it became an important city for both World War I and World War II. However, it had become a main target for the opposition, the Allied forces and in December of 1940, air raids began raining down on the city. This lasted until the war ended, leaving the city pretty much in ruins. During the long process of reconstructing the city, a contest was held to build a temporary pavilion to host Germany’s Bundesgartenschau. This was a biennial federal run horticulture show to fund the transformation of an open area that took place in 1974. Being an important honor to win the competition, various architects …show more content…
Designed to be both cost efficient at the time as well as fit the desired aesthetic of organic, the Multihalle is a grid shell based structure that fit those needs. The architects and engineers of the project needed to use the grid shell to create a self supporting structure that had the appearance of being lightweight and elegant but affordable. At the end of completion, the final piece was so thin that the ratio of thickness of the shell to the span of the entire Multihalle was only around .00625. Through a series of models made of chains, the architects could play with and create many various different types of forms of hills to compare with the landscape of the surrounding area as well as fit to the needs of the program. In addition to meeting its earlier goals, the process of creating the structure allowed future architects and designers to use similar approaches. The discoveries made from the process of building the pavilion were considered to be revolutionary in the 1970s and its success allowed a supposedly temporary structure to continue