Holy order

David Chipperfield Architects turns a 17th-century German convent into a 21st-century office complex

- SOPHIE LOVELL

Successful architecture serves its users as well as its environment. It responds to its physical, social and historical context. It gives back more than it takes. David Chipperfield Architects is not only great at getting the aesthetics right, but also a master at responding to existing context, then harmonising and enhancing. Its recently completed Jacoby Studios office building, in the small German city of Paderborn, is a perfect example.

Paderborn, in North Rhine-Westphalia, is, as the name implies, where the river Pader is ‘born’ from some 200 springs across the city centre, threading together in interconnecting streams. It was founded by Charlemagne in the 8th century but, like many European cities, suffered damage during the Second World War – 85 per cent of it was destroyed. Nevertheless, the central urban plan from the Middle Ages is still very much intact. There are parts of the old city wall, large Catholic churches and smaller buildings in a typical 1950s West German style – a shopping arcade, large roads, some pedestrianised areas and the odd brutalist structure. In short, it is a fairly typical German city.