Beiersdorf

Designed by Mertins Landschaftsarchitektur

Location: Germany, Hamburg — Type: Corporate/Company Garden — Built: 2023 — Show on Google Maps

New working world in a flourishing garden landscape

The company Beiersdorf AG opened its headquarters in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel in 2023. The total size of it is 51,000 square meters. Round about 3,000 employees work in the building. The new Beiersdorf Campus offers a wide range of opportunities for dynamic work in ultra-modern areas inside the building as well as in the outdoor areas. The architecture of the corporate headquarters was designed by Hadi Teherani. The landscapearchitecture team Mertins Landschaftsarchitektur planned the spacious outdoor area on behalf of the traditional house. The collaboration came about as a result of a competition announced by the company in 2016.

The main idea

The common thread for the design of the outdoor facilities is the company’s transparency and its responsibility towards nature, people and the environment. That is why the open spaces were initially opened up to the urban street space. A diverse range of intensively and extensively designed open spaces has been created on the internal company premises. Those can be used both during breaks and for working.

The topography of the site, the functional requirements and the specifications of the building resulted in a garden landscape which is a future-oriented working world. It has the spirit of “New Work” and shows numerous, inspiring communication areas and catering terraces.

Flourishing garden landscape

When visitors enter the Beiersdorf site via the garden entrance, the path to the new administration building leads through a flourishing garden landscape.

The basic idea for the garden landscape was to convey the impression of a flowing transition from the architecture through the garden into pure nature. The uniform, controlled plant structures gradually dissolve away from the building. The greater the distance from the building, the more diverse and fragmented the character of the planting becomes. This means that the “block planting” near the building facades gradually changes into “mixed planting”. This is followed by “matrix planting” which shows isolated highlights in a generally rather homogeneously planted area. In the end, the planting turns into a small wild meadow. Users walk through an ocean of blue and white flowers that are reminiscent of the color scheme of the Beiersdorf brand “Nivea”. In between there are meandering paths that open up into small squares. The islands surrounded by evergreen hedges offer retreats for individual and team work or for lunch in the garden.

The entire length of the garden landscape is bordered by neutral grass bands in the north and south. There are parent, medium-sized trees in it. Isolated solitary trees around the garden islands also structure the space.

It is only evident from the well-integrated ventilation structures and escape stairs that the area is covered by an underground car park. Due to the associated limitation of the statically effective load, the substrate layer had to be kept as thin as possible. To plant larger trees, the substrate was hilled up.

Mirror pool at the lecture hall

When designing the campus it was an important aspect to provide access to the Beiersdorf area for the general public since the Beiersdorf site is directly adjacent to the public space in Beiersdorfstrasse.

After adding a third wing to the laboratory building, the water landscape around the eye-catching lecture hall building was redesigned. The campus motif of the green islands is recurring. Nevertheless, low-growing grasses are placed on the island beds of this section. Sparse trees form the design framework of the silvery, shiny lecture hall solitaire. The landscape architects selected multi-stemmed Gleditsia triacanthos ‘Skyline’, which harmonizes well with the grasses thanks to its light yellow foliage. Also, they make the area much lighter. Their arrangement allows a variety of views of the lecture hall building from outside.