Two large com­pa­nies have their head­quar­ters at Auf­bau Haus: the Auf­bau Ver­lag Pub­lish­ing House and Mod­u­lor, a ma­te­ri­al's provider which, as Planet Mod­u­lor, pro­vides ad­di­tional ser­vices to the cre­ative and craft in­dus­tries in the build­ing. The ar­eas of ac­tiv­ity of the two main ten­ants – writ­ing and ma­te­ri­als – pro­vided the start­ing points for the de­sign of the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem. Moni­teurs’ idea was that the ar­ti­sans of Planet Mod­u­lor should be in­volved in the cre­ation process.

The sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy com­pany Merck is ex­pand­ing its Darm­stadt site into a global head­quar­ters. The his­toric in­dus­trial site is turn­ing into a “Merck City”: state-of-the-art in­fra­struc­ture, a new In­no­va­tion Cen­ter and new, mod­ern pro­duc­tion and of­fice build­ings cre­ate an in­no­v­a­tive work­ing en­vi­ron­ment for over 10,000 em­ploy­ees. In ad­di­tion, the fam­ily busi­ness cel­e­brated its 350-year an­niver­sary at the cen­tral, re­designed Emanuel-Merck-Platz in May 2018!

In close co­op­er­a­tion (what we call co-cre­at­ing!) with Merck and the ar­chi­tec­ture of­fice HENN, who de­vel­oped a mas­ter plan for the plant and planned the In­no­va­tion Cen­ter, Moni­teurs de­signed an over­ar­ch­ing ori­en­ta­tion con­cept: out­door and in­door sig­nage as strong brand el­e­ments serve as ori­en­ta­tion on the Merck plant.

The new building of the Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung is located on the Telegrafenberg in Potsdam, one of the historically and internationally important science locations. The building was designed by architects BHBVT, who designed it to blend harmoniously into the forest. It consists solely of flowing forms, with a circular atrium connecting the three round components. 200 scientists from all over the world have been conducting research here since October 2015. Moniteurs has taken up the color concept of the architecture, the coding of the three components with different bright colors in the signage system and reinforced it with an associative nomenclature. The iconic floor plan extends across all floors and serves as a color marker, which is an essential point of reference for orientation in the symmetrical space.