The central design idea of the STABILO CUBE is the implementation of the brand values with a generous and communication-promoting space offer in a very simple and concentrated building.

Oriented towards the height development of the existing building, the new building is a striking cube that spatially defines the existing access area to the street. Its appearance is self confident, at the same time the existing building is respected and spatially upgraded. The distinctive symbolism of the building becomes clear from all sides and achieves the desired long-distance effect as a brand building and structural representative of Schwan STABILO on the premises of Schwanhäuser Grundstückbesitzholding GmbH und Co. KG.

If the clear and familiar shape of the cube does not raise any questions, the "colour" and facade design of the cube are unusual and decisive for the contrast to the surroundings. As with a "black box", the perforated façade with its perforated cards poses puzzles about the content and storey of the cube behind the black façade. Generous openings in the area of the showroom "Planetkonzept Würfel", the foyer and the conference centre provide insight and allow a different, coloured interior to shine through and emerge to the outside. While colour can only be experienced as an accent and staging of the insights into the building's interior when one looks at the building, the image turns into the opposite when one enters the building. The compactness of the building dissolves and a sequence of galleries and airspaces allows the whole volume of the cube to be experienced. Strong and bright colours dominate the interior and stand in clear contrast to each other and to the shell of the building. The components that define and structure the space are clearly assigned a colour and thus become striking elements of the overall space inside the cube.

The architects of the STABILO CUBE used green-coloured HERADESIGN® Superfine acoustic panels from Knauf Ceiling Solutions About 100 employees from the Marketing and Sales departments of the international writing instrument manufacturer work in an excellent acoustic environment in the new STABILO CUBE administration building.

This is made possible by the use of HERADESIGN® acoustic panels from KnaufCeiling Solutions. The architectural highlight: the panels are coloured bright green, reminiscent of the famous highlighters. However, this is not the only special feature. During their school days, training and study, almost everyone has used highlighters. It is also very likely that these were made by STABILO, which has sold more than 2 billion of them since the market launch in 1971.

With the inauguration of the STABILO CUBE, a distinctive black cube at the headquarters in Heroldsberg in Franconia, the family business Schwan-STABILO celebrated its 160th anniversary last year. The former pencil manufacturer from Nuremberg has long since become a successful global group with three independent business divisions: Cosmetics, Writing Instruments and Outdoor, with annual sales of more than €600m and approx. 46,000 employees. The €15.5m new building for the Writing Instruments division combines innovative design with an ecologically sustainable concept, modern working areas, a computing centre and a STABILO brand shop under a single roof.

The Acoustic Challenge: A Large Atrium and Open-Plan Offices

The building provides space for about 100 employees for creative work outside of the norm. The three upper floors house open-plan offices and communication areas with sofas and seating groups, which are connected by a common atrium and a bright orange steel stairway, whose colour scheme was designed according to the rules of Feng-Shui. The fact that quiet working is possible without acoustic chaos is due to a feature designed by the Cologne architects mvarchitekt + starkearchitektur. Namely, the creative team mounted 250m²‪ of acoustic boards on the wall adjacent to the stairway.

HERADESIGN® Superfine boards are used for the wall cladding. These are single layer wood wool acoustic panels from the ceiling specialist Knauf Ceiling Solutions, which are predestined for use in interiors and covered outdoor areas and reduce the noise level in the atrium of the STABILO CUBE. How? They do this by converting most of the sound energy into heat by means of friction and only reflect a small proportion of the sound.

Knauf Ceiling Solutions uses a special trick to make this conversion particularly effective: the company is the only manufacturer in the world which bonds the wood wool acoustic boards with the mineral magnesite, and not with cement as its competitors do. "This results in 15% higher and especially fast sound absorption", explains Thomas Wölfer, Knauf Ceiling Solutions. "The level of an initial signal is reduced by 60 decibels in only 0.4 seconds." The result: the sound level reduces and the concentration of the staff increases.

No Stress Due to Noise: Acoustic Boards Create a Healthy Environment

This acoustic optimisation is anything but a luxury. A large number of studies have shown that in many cases, employees in open-plan offices are exposed to a noise level of above 95 dB for several hours per day—which is almost as loud as a circular saw or a discotheque (100 dB). This has a detrimental effect on employees. The consequences of the continuous noise smog include burn-out, hearing damage, and throat problems due to speaking too loudly. Wölfer: "With our wall cladding we were able to make a contribution to a healthy working environment for our employees."

Bright Colours: Acoustic Boards Coloured in the Traditional Highlighter Green

The acoustic panels not only create a pleasant, quiet atmosphere—they also blend in with the architects' colour scheme. The walls, ceilings and corridors have the traditional bright colours of STABILO BOSS highlighters—in green yellow, red, orange and blue. Because of this, Knauf Ceiling Solutions coloured the wall boards green (NCS 2080-G20Y). Wölfer: "The natural texture of the wood wool with a fibre width of one millimetre is an ideal surface for creative colour schemes." In general, an enormous range of colours is available. "Customers can select almost any colour from common colours systems such as RAL, NCS or StoColor, as well as from a wide range of special colours." But don't employees in the STABILO CUBE suffer from colour overkill? No, because the architects cooperated with a Feng-Shui consultant to ensure sufficient white areas to balance this.

Unique in the Industry

Knauf Ceiling Solutions did not just have to cater for the colour scheme of the Cologne architects. To provide even greater visual variety, the 1200×600mm acoustic boards switch their direction from vertical to horizontal with every second board. "This presented us with a great challenge, because no precedents for such a special installation exist in the industry," says Wölfer.

How did the Knauf Ceiling Solutions experts solve this? With metal mounting rails screwed to the wall. These have a top hat section which is inserted in the groove around the Wood Wool board. With this, the entire fastening system is invisible—no screws or rails can be seen. There is only a five millimetre gap between the individual boards. "Invisibility of the mounting system was very important to the architects," remembers Wölfer. "The staff passes close to the boards every day on the large stairway. Screws would have been much more conspicuous than in projects in which the acoustic boards are mounted on the ceiling, several metres above the floor."

Acoustic Boards Impressed the Architects with their Sustainability

Did the acoustic boards have to meet any other criteria? Yes, they had to be sustainable—just like the building as a whole, which thanks to the combination of a geothermal system, a CO2 heat pump and free cooling, is environmentally friendly and saves resources. The architects were impressed by the acoustic boards, because they are a biologically safe natural product which only consists of wood, magnesite and water.

"We are convinced that environmentally friendly products will become increasingly important," says Klaus Kumerschek, HERADESIGN® Brand Manager for Knauf Ceiling Solutions. "Architects are increasingly becoming used to the rough surface structure of the acoustic boards. "In the past, a rough structure was not always appreciated, because it was too reminiscent of the old wood wool building boards. Nowadays, architects like to work with such rough surfaces."

About the STABILO CUBE

The STABILO CUBE at the headquarters of the fifth generation family-managed business Schwan-STABILO was inaugurated in July 2015—punctually for the 160th anniversary of the company. The basement of the 4,850m² building houses a computing centre. The ground floor contains a company restaurant, a conference centre and a public brand showroom with windows up to the ceiling. The large number of small windows in the three upper floors in which the offices for 100 marketing and sales staff are located are staggered. This results in a distinctive pixelated façade, which does not reveal the floor structure on the outside. The total cost of the black cube building was €15.5m.