This house is a robot
Auricon Technische Dienste GmbH specialises in building automation
The mission statement of Auricon Technische Dienste GmbH could be broken down as follows: if nobody receives a call from a guest staying at a hotel, the staff did a good job. Auricon specialises in building automation. In hotels, this means fine-tuning the air conditioning, cooling, heating, and ventilation so that hotel guests can increase their comfort by simply turning a dial. ‘This applies to the hotel’s rooms as well as the spa, the restaurant, the conference rooms, the library, and the lobby,’ says André Loest, the company’s managing partner. Auricon plans and builds equipment for measurement, control, and regulation in hotels, shopping malls, hospitals, or even embassies, all across the world. According to Loest, setting up sensors for temperature, pressure, and humidity and collecting the data is fairly straight-forward. ‘But it is important to know where to best install the equipment and how to design the controls so that the whole system works reliably.’ This knowledge is the result of years of experience.
Starting out as a planning office in 2011, Auricon grew continuously and, in terms of staff, is now the largest automation company in Berlin, he says. When looking for a new headquarters after the old building in Oberschöneweide grew too small, Adlershof quickly made the cut. ‘We have had good relationships with many companies in Adlershof, so it made sense to move closer to them,’ says the company head. ‘The commute of our staff has hardly changed, and the central location facilitates finding new people.’ Moving further to the outskirts of Berlin would have been cheaper, but it also would have been harder to find suitable staff.
Auricon submitted its concept to WISTA Management GmbH, the technology park’s operating company, scored points for its innovativeness and focus on training young people, and won a bid for a premises on Karl-Ziegler-Strasse. After a year of construction, the company moved to Adlershof in summer. The interior of the four-story office building still smells of fresh paint; the walls and stone floors still have that glow of novelty.
Loest’s desk has a view of the landscaped park of Johannisthal. What was once a place where aviation pioneers took off in their adventurous flying machines has now become a place with grazing sheep, benches, a skate park, and a volleyball court. ‘We often go for a few games after work,’ says Loest, who, with his fresh style, is clearly not an overbearing boss or authoritarian leader. Later, when we take a tour of the company, the mutual respect between him and his team is striking.
‘I am really impressed by the ideas young people have for advancing automation and smart applications,’ says Loest, who, at 55, is twenty years above the staff average. This wealth of ideas and the demands of the market are the two major drivers of the company’s growth. To foster new ideas, there is a type of ‘think tank’ on the ground floor. This is a room filled with nothing but comfortable, colourful chairs that facilitate exploring and bouncing ideas off each other as far away from an office desk as possible. The good ones are implemented just next door, where a large sign on the wall points to the ‘Technology Factory.’ There, the staff puts together switchboards made up of dozens of switches, chips, and wires tailored to each individual project. A whiteboard lists all the current projects from Berlin-Mitte to Teheran. Some workstation in the large room are still vacant. However, Loest is ‘quite confident that we will continue to grow here in Adlershof.’
By Ralf Nestler for Adlershof Journal