Deep in the Ore Mountains, in the small village of Hundsdübel near Stützengrün, the Mühle company has been manufacturing the finest shaving products for around 80 years. Handmade and locally manufactured from aluminum, wood, porcelain, resin and badger hair, they are known all over the world to people who shave.
For the expanding company, the narrow, on a slope situated factory site has been compacted with a new production hall.

The intention of the new additional building was to create a workplace with a refinement that resembles exactly Mühle’s products and working methods: local and high-quality, traditional and modern, sharp and yet cautious. Based on the urban planning specifications, the 400 square meter hall is positioned as a link between two existing buildings on the factory site.
It is divided into a high single-storey production section and a smaller two-storey area. The ground floor of this “house within a house” construction holds offices and administration rooms. The upper floor accommodates a large conference room with a view over the production hall.
Externally, the new building has a shimmering glass appearance. The glass allows the exterior spaces to flow inwards, provides insights into the production process and, last but not least, ensures maximum natural lighting in the hall.
The façade is structured by finely shimmering and precisely folded aluminum profiles – a deliberate reference to the fine shaving products that are manufactured here at the site. In contrast to the exterior appearance, the interior of the hall is characterized almost exclusively by wooden surfaces, that make it feel like a warming, sheltering body.

Simple and yet elegant, a wing-smoothed steel concrete floor forms the structural basis of the new building. The floor slab also provides the heating in the hall via an industrial floor heating system based on a ground water heat pump.
The building is supported towards the north-western slope by a steel concrete wall at the back, which is finished in exposed concrete.
Due to the proximity to the Ore Mountains and in the context of conscious building with renewable raw materials, all other load-bearing elements are designed as timber constructions. The columns and beams are made of laminated wood. Ceiling and roof are designed as solid cross-laminated timber elements. The internal window structures and acoustic cladding are also made of wood.
These natural materials not only provide good structural and insulating characteristics, but also ensure a healthy climate in the hall.
The roof, which is clearly visible from the village, is covered in greenery and houses the photovoltaics that supply the electricity for the geothermal heat pump.

Building project: Mühle Shaving, new construction of factory hall 4
Client: Mühle | Hans-Jürgen Müller GmbH & Co. KG
Completion: 2023
Photographer: Simon Menges; Felix Brüggemann