Faithful in every detail thanks to SCHOTT TIKANA^®

Background
It is a piece of German company history:
In only 30 years, the Schocken company developed into the fourth largest department store chain in Germany with numerous subsidiaries, among them, in Cottbus, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, and Chemnitz.

For the conversion of the Chemnitz department store, originally completed in 1930, which was used as such until 2001, the Schocken Brothers owners used the architect Erich Mendelsohn again. He was one of the most important architects of the 20th century, and had already planned the Schocken Department Store in Stuttgart. Mendelsohn planned a 9-story building with triangular cut-outs in Chemnitz.


Challenge
Today the former Schocken Department Store is a hub of the state museum for archaeology in Chemnitz – “smac” for short.
Before “smac” could be housed in the building, it had to be rebuilt, at first extensively – but also in an appropriate manner for monuments. The challenge was to carry out the changes in such a way that the former appearance of the building was retained in light of Mendelsohn’s purposes. On the street frontage, this concerned the historically correct renewal of the bands of windows on the upper floors, and the window fronts of the lateral stairways. At the same time, solar protection and heat insulation had to be integrated.

Solution
For the authentic glazing for the historical bands of windows of the former Schocken Department Store, the architects and engineers decided to use TIKANA^® restoration glass from SCHOTT. The colorless, machine-drawn glass conforms to historical window glasses.

Other advantages of the special glass: 91% of the light passes through, and has 100% color rendering. It is therefore well-suited for the glazing of museum windows.

In Chemnitz, an innovative insulating glass was integrated into the bands of windows. This consists, for example

• of a 6 mm-thick outside pane with solar protection coating
• a 16 mm-wide spacer
• as well as an 8 mm-thick interior float glass pane.

In the areas where the insulating glass should protect against burglary, laminated security glass was used instead of float glass. Spaces are filled in both cases with argon.

The historical existing single glazing in the lateral stairways gave way to a TIKANA^® insulating glass, with matte sandblasting and 8 mm-thick spacers. For heat insulation, the space of the panes was filled with krypton.

Architects
ARGE Kaufhaus Schocken
Auer+Weber+Assoziierte
knerer und lang
Architekten BDA
Stuttgart Dresden

Structural engineer for glass
glasfaktor Ingenieure GmbH, Dresden

Glass processor
Flachglas Sachsen GmbH, Grimma

Glass manufacturer
SCHOTT