New innovation centre for Sto - Architectural competition results revealed

Sto SE & Co. KGaA is planning a new research and development centre at its headquarters in Stühlingen, Germany. With the premises surrounded by two national highways, several mountains, and a river running along the border with Switzerland, its only available location for the new building complex proved to be what is currently the employee car park. After the city of Stühlingen had approved the development plan at the end of 2023, Sto invited 15 architectural firms from six different countries to enter a competition for the new complex design. The aim was to mark the start a new chapter in Sto's Corporate Architecture story - following the completion of Michael Wilford’s masterplan for the existing company premises in 2016. Specifically, the brief was based on developing an office building and two testing halls spanning a total of 20,400 square metres in gross floor area on the 25,300m² site, creating something that would "both represent the Sto Group's leading role in the world of sustainable building products and blend harmoniously into the floodplain landscape of the Wutach valley." By the deadline on 22 January 2024, 14 firms had submitted their ideas to the company running the competition, Bäumle Architekten/Stadtplaner in Darmstadt.