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RS: Bath Island at Steinhude is a recreational island facility, located on the largest fresh water lake in Northern Germany. This is a forty-six thousand square meter island for recreation and nature preservation. As part of Expo 2000, the local community chose to add a facility with a small boat dock for solar powered recreational boats, which will be powered by photovoltaic cells. In fact most of the building's roof form is clad in photovoltaic. It was an interesting project and quite a challenge.
This is a very small building and it only totals about 3,500 square feet. It is comprised of public toilets, lifeguard facilities, small café, a small observation deck, boat storage for the lifeguards, and a generator for supplemental power for the kitchen.
v5: The power that is being generated on the roof surface, is that just for the building itself or does it feed other areas?
RS: It serves two purposes, one is taking care of lighting loads of the building, but not the cooking loads because of the high levels that are required there. It also provides a charging system for the photovoltaic powered boats. The hoods of the boats themselves have a small photovoltaic which helps during the day, but they really depend on additional charging during the night from the photovoltaics on the roof of this building.
v5: Was the technical aspect of maximizing the roof surface difficult?
RS: Yes, it had a lot to say about the building's orientation because we had lifeguard views toward the beach to deal with, views from the observation deck and maximizing the vistas and of course the solar orientations.
v5: Are the solid parts plaster?
RS: They are probably a wood cladding, perhaps tongue and groove, wood plank. Because this is a very ecologically sensitive island, we went through numerous reviews with the Green Party there in Germany and are building out of wood, with a minimal amount of steel and imported products.
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Bath Island at Steinhude
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Steinhude Sea Recreational Island Facility. Views of the project model.
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v5: What is the thrust of that? I understand the political framework for it, but a building like this you surely need some momma batteries sitting in the basement somewhere, right?
RS: Yes, right. (laughs) That has been our running joke, to try to clarify the feedback on the logic the environmentalists offer . They did not want the top of the building to exceed the maximum tree line because they were afraid that birds would fly into the structure and things like this.
v5: Is this constructed yet?
RS: No, it is scheduled to be finished in the Spring of 2000, just in time for Expo, which begins in May.
v5: Are there opportunities in the Los Angeles community for this type of application? Are there the same sort of driving interests in Southern California that you see in Germany?
RS: I think there is more political involvement in Germany. In fact, this building received a fifty thousand Dmark grant from the government which helped to pay for the photovoltaics. You do not see as much of that these days in the United States. There was a period of time during the Carter administration, when there was money available for that type of thing. I imagine that in the not so distance future there will be more serious consideration, especially in Southern California, where we have plenty of sunshine.
This building is rather interesting in the sense that every elevation is so dramatically different. It is hard sometimes when we talk about a project and it's origins, to talk of any one imagery or characteristic of it, because it evolves from side to side as you move around the building. The overall gesture has something to do with a perhaps reclining sunbather, a kind of figure stretched out on the beach and getting a lot of south exposure there. (laughs)
v5: How do you begin with that sort of metaphor? Where does it start and where does it end?
RS: In this project it started in a way that never found it's way to fruition. One of the original co-sponsors, the City of Hanover, commissioned a windmill in the form of art. We originally had a tripartite composition which included the pragmatic building, this very artistic windmill and a third visible object, which was an enclosure or shell over the boat dock. I think the essential gesture that remains, which is the reclining figure, came about at the time when the windmill disappeared because we lost that sponsor. The boat dock enclosure went away because we got serious about the budget. We were left with this single structure, so we put the observation deck, (formerly in the windmill tower), into the building and gave the building a more intense program and form. We were very happy with how it came out.
v5: It seems much richer than having everything separated.
RS: In fact we actually have this schematic design, from the time of when there were three separate objects. This lake is known for it's eels, (laughs), so the stairway became rather eel like in form beside the sunbather. This very conceptual and artistic approach did not run the gamut of the project, but we are quite satisfied with the results.
v5: I'm still haunted by a scene in a German film the "Tin Drum" where an eel fisherman is using a horse's head as bait to fish for eel. The eel would come and cling to the skull and the fisherman would drag it in. There is a moment in the film where the fisherman is bringing in the line and thelittle boy is transfixed by this Hydra like skull with sea eels crawling from it.
RS: That sounds like a very powerful image to keep in your head. (laughs)
There are some fabulous eel fishing boats that are still anchored around this island and they are beautifully proportioned because they have flat bottoms and vertical sides with dark wood, which I assume has a waterproof pitch. Quite striking.
v5: You talked about the walls being wood and lathing, were you able to go to a wood boat building technology and look to the those details and materials for this building?
RS: Not from boat building in this instance. It is more about recreational type structures that are in
this part of the world. There are a lot of planking and tongue and groove type details.
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