Featured Project
Little hands – well protected

Paderborn is one of the cradles of the German IT industry. It was here that computer pioneer Heinz Nixdorf founded Nixdorf AG back in 1968, which quickly emerged as the technological pacesetter for the industry. To this day, a large number of IT businesses have their headquarters in the city in central Germany. More than a few of them are products of spin-offs from the University of Paderborn, which is one of the country’s leading higher education centers in the field of IT. And one of the most successful of said spin-offs is undoubtedly dSpace. The company, which now has a payroll of no less than 1,600 people, develops and builds systems for testing electronic control devices for the automotive and aviation industries. Thanks to its rapid growth, some time ago dSpace already found itself in need of a new and larger head office, and the site of a former army barracks offered a welcome opportunity for a new build. The company decided to seize the moment, choosing not only to create new offices for its employees, but also to boost its appeal as an employer by means of a family-friendly offering – in-house childcare. This enabled the company to support its employees optimally in their efforts to balance work and family life. The new nursery was developed according to plans by architektur-werk-stadt Balhorn Wewer Karhoff and is a sandstone-colored, two-story building with bay windows in a warm red tone. On the inside, bright white and light-colored woods predominate. In order to meet the specific requirements for finger-trap protection on the doors of childcare facilities, the architects made use of the hinge technology of another company that is a real success story in the region, namely SIMONSWERK.

The German Statutory Accident Insurance makes clear stipulations for the way doors in childcare facilities need to be attached to the so-called secondary closing edges: There must be no way in which fingers can get trapped between the door and the frame. In order to avoid such a risk, the architects used SIMONSWERK door hinge systems: the “VARIANT VX 7099 Finger Protection” model for all wooden doorframes and the “VARIANT VX 7100 Finger Protection”model for the aluminum frames. The hinge system enables the leaf of the door to open and close with a consistently minimal distance from the frame and thus reliably makes sure children cannot insert any fingers into the space in between and thus injure themselves. This in no way affects the functioning of the door: The hinge systems permit an unlimited opening angle of up to 180 degrees and can hold doors weighing up to 120 kilograms. What’s more, they are both easy to install and look great. The comfortable 3D adjustment makes it possible to finetune the positioning of the doors down to the last three millimeters in any direction and also to change the contact pressure, likewise by plus or minus three millimeters. Thanks to the hinge technology from SIMONSWERK, the architects were able to install stylish door solutions in the daycare facility with a clear conscience, knowing their little users’ hands would be well protected.