Bosch’s new workspace in southwest Germany is housed in a former production facility. Ubiquitous zinc surfaces, graphic wall and floor treatments, and strewn foliage and furniture add to an eclectic, dreamlike aesthetic. “We wanted to combine the industrial past of the hall with the actual use of it,” says architect Alexander Fehre.
Courtesy Zooey Braun
Alexander Fehre, a Stuttgart, Germany–based interior architect, has earned a reputation among his commercial clients for pairing modern, adamantine material palettes with navigable open-plan layouts. A 2014 design for the offices of a conveyor-belt company near Stuttgart, for example, made clever use of aluminum mesh panels to delineate spaces and echo the industrial context.
Fehre’s more recent design for the auto-part supplier Bosch exhibits a similar spirit. Wrapped up in 2017 and located on a tucked-away wooded road in Schwäbisch Gmünd in Germany’s automobile-manufacturing heartland, the new offices aim to engender collaboration and innovation while providing flexibility and responsiveness—with a strong visual punch.
The client requested an aesthetically striking workplace, and the nearly 35,000-square-foot space is just that: Its eclectic combination of materials, surfaces, and colors delivers a surreal, postmodern feel. Housed in a sprawling former production hall, it articulates zones through design elements like vibrantly painted furniture, ample applications of zinc and raw wood, and full-size trees that seem to hover in the corporate ether.
