In May 2005, the new BMW plant in Leipzig be­gan pro­duc­tion. The heart of the plant is the cen­tral build­ing, de­signed by Lon­don ar­chi­tect Zaha Ha­did, around which the pro­duc­tion halls are loosely grouped. Not by chance has Zaha Ha­did’s build­ing won sev­eral awards: not only does it form the com­mu­nica­tive cen­tre of the plant, con­nect­ing all ar­eas by the short­est route and, through its trans­parency, pro­vide a space for ex­changes and meet­ings. Rather, the staff work­ing in the cen­tral build­ing are also di­rectly in­te­grated into the pro­duc­tion: high above their desks, the car bod­ies pass silently through the cen­tral build­ing on long con­veyor belts, from one stage of pro­duc­tion to the next.

The new head­quar­ters of Aachen­Münch­ener In­sur­ance cap­ti­vates vis­i­tors through its open ar­chi­tec­ture. A glass bridge con­nects the dif­fer­ent parts of the build­ing and leaves room for a pedes­trian zone and shops. This en­hances the over­all ur­ban at­trac­tive­ness and also serves the par­tic­u­lar de­mands placed upon it by the var­i­ous groups of users, i.e. the clients of Aachen­Münch­ener and its sup­pli­ers. Moni­teurs adopted the ba­sic con­cept of the fa­cade by de­riv­ing the shape, ma­te­r­ial and colour of the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem columns di­rectly from it: tall rec­tan­gles hold the in­for­ma­tion, but nev­er­the­less al­low a view of the build­ing be­hind. This is com­ple­mented by dis­creet signs placed di­rectly onto the Aachen­Münch­ener build­ing.

The new build­ing of the Pots­dam In­sti­tute for Cli­mate Im­pact Re­search is sit­u­ated on Telegrafen­berg Hill in Pots­dam, a his­toric and in­ter­na­tion­ally sig­nif­i­cant sci­ence lo­ca­tion. The build­ing was de­signed by BH­BVT Ar­chi­tects, who de­signed it in such a way that it fits har­mo­niously into the sur­round­ing for­est. It con­sists only of flow­ing forms, and a cir­cu­lar atrium binds to­gether the three round sec­tions of the build­ing. 200 sci­en­tists from all over the world have been con­duct­ing re­search here since Oc­to­ber 2015. Moni­teurs adopted and strength­ened the colour con­cept of the ar­chi­tec­ture and the en­cod­ing of the three build­ing sec­tions into the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem with var­i­ous bright colours and an as­so­cia­tive nomen­cla­ture. The icon-based ground plan cov­ers all floors and serves as a colour marker, pro­vid­ing con­sid­er­able ori­en­ta­tion aid within the sym­met­ri­cal space.