Details

Glass Works Thomas, Amberg

Architects:                          Prof. Walter Gropius, Alex Ccijanovic (The Architects Collaborative Inc.)
Beginning of construction: 1968
Opening:                             9.6.1970
Area of construction:         11.500 qm

The construction of the building has to take into consideration a special topography: the glassworks are located in a depression of the terrain. It is rather the roof-sides that have the effect of a façade than the outside walls. Walter Gropius was aware of this fact when he said: "I certainly know what I am doing. I am placing a ship into a green lake."

Gropius’ second factory for Rosenthal is much more dramatic than the factory Rosenthal am Rothbühl, and this is why it is regarded as the "better" piece of architecture. Actually, Gropius exemplifies here that a piece of architecture – when it completely answers the intended purposes which it is designed for – can also be "beautiful".

The main building, dominating feature of the whole plant, is a cathedral-like central nave. Its construction is surprisingly simple and almost of a timeless beauty. Based on a raster of 9x9 meters, the construction consists of visible concrete elements, their grey colour giving a feeling of lightness to the almost twenty meter high inner space. Optimal air ventilation was a big issue in the almost one hundred meter long main workspace, where melting furnaces set free enormous heat and where glass batches are processed at temperatures up to 1300°C. A ridge ventilation with mechanically operated plate fins was installed in the ridge. This natural thermal lift sucks off hot air, thus providing constant air convection. Moreover, Gropius had huge revolving doors, which could be fully opened, built in the face sides of the central nave. An array of low buildings, earthed up from outside, surround the main building on three sides, the inner courtyards in between have been set with flowers and grass. So, the workers in the high nave get a real "outdoor-feeling". Since the building resembles ecclesiastical architecture, people soon called it the "Glaskathedrale" (glass cathedral). In 1997 it was sold to the F. X. Nachtmann GmbH.

Source:
Wolfgang Bornträger: "Die aufwendige Artistik der feinen Lebensart" in "Unternehmenskultur. Der Weg zum
   Markterfolg", Verlag der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, 1990 
Clara Menck: „Kathedrale zum unheiligen Philip", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16.6.1970
Hans-Peter Riese: „Fließband im Grünen", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 20.10.1970
Ferdinand Simoneit: „Rosenthal und Rosenthaler" in „Die Rosenthal Story", Econ, 1980
Heidemarie Sander: „Glasfabrik bauen ist … wie ein Kind zeugen", Mittelbayerische
   Zeitung, 11./12.6.1988
Henning Müller-Gerbes: „Bauen im Selbstverständnis eines Unternehmens" in „Materialien 3: Bauen für die
   Wirtschaft", Architektenkammer Rheinland-Pfalz, 1988
Ulrich Kern: „Gebaute Unternehmenskultur", Industriebau, Heft 2/1992

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