Bringing the Porsche brand to life
A place where the Porsche brand can be experienced, touched and experienced - this is how Autohaus Starke formulates its claim. This refers to the new building and expansion of the Porsche Centre Osnabrück. The brand vehicles of the Swabian car manufacturer are skilfully staged between the raised sales area, the noble ambience and the rounded shop window front. The Emsdetten-based building services specialist ensures an optimal room climate here with TECEfloor underfloor heating.
The Starke Group is one of the first Porsche dealers in Germany. Both the sale of new vehicles and the sale of factory service vehicles have been successfully handled here since 1963. Customers and interested parties appreciate this and come from a wide radius - from Papenburg to Greven and from Nordhorn to Dülmen. "Passion for top performance - that is our motto. We want to give our customers and sports car enthusiasts the best. With our new building, we are now creating even more space for the fascination of Porsche," explains Managing Director Michael Haas.
Photo: Mike König
The Starke Group is one of the first Porsche dealers in Germany. Both the distribution of new vehicles and the sale of factory service vehicles have been successfully handled here since 1963. Customers and interested parties appreciate this and come from a wide radius - from Papenburg to Greven and from Nordhorn to Dülmen. "Passion for top performance - that is our motto. We want to give our customers and sports car enthusiasts the best. With our new building, we are now creating even more space for the fascination of Porsche," explains Managing Director Michael Haas.
The property is located in a mixed area of Osnabrück's Weststadt, just under two kilometres from the city centre. It is a quiet, student-oriented district with many green spaces - the university and technical college of this large city in Lower Saxony are in the immediate vicinity. In order to make the sale of sports cars in this ambience more contemporary, the dealer had its existing building demolished and a completely new sales centre built between autumn 2012 and autumn 2013.
The interior of the building is divided into two floors: the central exhibition hall with gallery and sales rooms are on the first floor. The reception area is set slightly apart. And then the cars are presented at a higher level. The offices are located on the second floor. Both floors are connected by a staircase with a greater height offset. Attached to the building is a workshop - no conversion work took place here.
The interior of the building is a mixture of dark grey and white. Norbert Stallmeier from the engineering office igk Krabbe was in charge of the construction management of the new building project. Regarding the interior design, Stallmeier says: "In keeping with Porsche's corporate identity, the centres are designed in a relatively uniform way throughout Europe. That means: tiles, steel and ceilings are dark grey - only the interior walls are white. Those who choose Porsche expect classic, discreet colours. This allows the brand to present itself appropriately."
An optimal indoor climate - that is also an important part of an appropriate staging. Given the size of the building, underfloor heating seemed a suitable solution. In Osnabrück, the choice fell on a surface heating system from TECE.
The Emsdetten-based domestic technology specialist supplied a total of 1200 square metres of TECEfloor for this purpose.
The proportion of radiation is particularly high with surface heating systems. This ensures an optimum feeling of comfort even at low room temperatures. TECEfloor has a low flow temperature of 35 degrees Celsius and is highly efficient in heat generation. This enables energy savings of six to 12 percent compared to radiators.
The SHK specialist company Laksowski GmbH from Hasbergen was responsible for installing the panel heating. Managing director Bernd Laskowski is convinced of the advantages of TECEfloor: "We have been working with the composite pipes from TECE for years. Our experience with it is good - it can simply be laid well and without any problems." The company produced the first diffusion-tight aluminium composite pipes back in the 1980s. TECE can draw on these decades of experience with pipe systems for surface heating systems.
In Osnabrück, aluminium composite pipes specially developed for the underfloor heating application were used. In contrast to conventional composite pipes, an extra soft aluminium was used here. Christian Beike, TECE product manager for the underfloor heating sector, explains: "Aluminium composite pipes for underfloor heating are usually standard installation pipes with a different coil length. Although this is very simple in production, on the construction site I don't want the stiffness that I expect with a surface-mounted drinking water pipe when laying the heating circuit. That's why we used a very soft aluminium especially for these TECEfloor underfloor heating pipes. In this way, we get a really butter-soft pipe which, compared to other composite pipes and also to all-plastic pipes, can be laid almost completely free of stresses and twists."
The panel heating is controlled by a gas condensing boiler, with which all rooms can be regulated individually. Laskowski and his staff installed the panel heating in the cement screed and tiled it. The pressure load of around six tonnes per square metre was particularly high here: "To be able to withstand this increased pressure, we inserted additional screed insulation. After all, if a Porsche Cayenne is standing on it, it should remain stable," says Laskowski.
In November, the completely renovated Porsche Centre was reopened - and now offers contemporary and appropriate space for staging the traditional brand.
Photos: Hermann Pentermann