Innovation Quarter Lippstadt

The ground-plan of the Innovation Quarter in Lippstadt is akin to a gently curved heart. The idea behind the building: bringing commerce and academic research together at a single location. The North-Rhine Westphalian town of Lippstadt near Paderborn has been home to a centre for innovation since 2020 that inspires and nurtures not just companies from the region but budding academics too. The competition to design the building was won in 2018 by the Rinsdorf Ströcker Architects (RSA) practice from Lippstadt.

A building has been erected a stone’s throw from the Hamm-Lippstadt University of Applied Sciences that “unites everything on one level and whose curvaceous design leaves room for creative ideas,” is how the architects formulate their own creative idea. As Francis Picabia once put it: “Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction.” It would seem to be on the cards, therefore, that the design of the single-storey new-build venture will be greatly conducive to new insights and thinking.

Just over 21,500 square feet of the structure’s floorspace has been taken up by the University to house, amongst other things, an urgently needed lecture theatre along with flexibly configurable areas for students wishing to think up founder ideas of their own. The opposite side of the heart is occupied by companies who have, for instance, rented space for their R&D departments in the IQ. The middle of the ground-plan is taken up by what has been dubbed a marketplace, a central public area that provides scope for meetings and exchanges of a more general nature.

The interior spaces derive their identity both from the unusual shape of the ground-plan and in equal measure from a fully glazed façade that bathes them in daylight. “Voids” cut into the building at right angles even admit natural light into the very depths of the building. They take the form of miniature oases of greenery that add an informal touch to the office atmosphere whilst simultaneously serving as attractive outdoor spaces for users of the IQ in which to either switch off briefly or work out in the open.

The views through from one business to the next afforded by these voids are likewise wholly geared towards facilitating communication, small “ad hoc meetings” and the resultant synergetic effects. Just how inspirational existing blueprints and ways of thinking can be is also evidenced by the FSB 1023 handle model deployed in the building. Johannes Potente authored it on the basis of a handle by Max Bill and Ernst Moeckl that famously came to be known as the “Ulm door handle”.

In the IQ, this lever-handle model is accompanied by a digital lock cylinder FSB is in a position to supply through a deal with SimonsVoss. The latter has been a pioneering force in the field of keyless security systems and is still seen as being a front-runner in the technology today. Its AX digital cylinder is particularly user-friendly: operation is simplified by an ergonomic yet compact knob that works with both optical and acoustic signals. The great scope for combination with FSB’s range of lever-handle sets makes this pairing an even more appealing proposition.