Now available in bookstores

Walls several meters thick, reinforced concrete ceilings, radiation shielding gates weighing tons: a particle accelerator is an architectural task of Babylonian proportions. Across roughly 300 pages, the book Form Follows Beam, published by Park Books, offers insight into this unusual and spectacular architectural project.

In interviews, Uwe Hermann, Kai Otto, Till Schneider and Bernd Tibes explain how they developed the form of the facility and why careful architectural and landscape design is central, even for a facility shaped so strongly by technical requirements. Supporting texts explain how the particle accelerator works, what research will be carried out in it, and why it is being built in Darmstadt. Drawings, sketches and visualizations, as well as photographs by Kirsten Bucher and Norbert Miguletz, bring the design and construction process vividly to life.

Edited by Florian Heilmeyer, Christian Holl, Steffen Knöll and Johannes Hucht.

Photo above: Andrew Alberts