Cottbus Integrates

Even the new building – a construction of steel, glass and concrete – resembles a beacon calling the future. But strategically situated at the main entrance to the Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus (BTU), the new Information, Communication and Media Center, signed by the firm of Basel star architects Herzog & de Meuron, is indeed the embodiment of a very ambitious claim – to cater for “an integrated information flow for the city of Cottbus."

Explaining the concept underpinning the new center, Prof. Dr. Ernst Siegmund, president of the university, comments, “In future services such as classical library services, electronic data processing and the multimedia growth sector will be brought together and integrated in a single service offering for students, scientists, academics and citizens alike.”

At present dispersed in buildings throughout the city, the university library will be rehoused in one place in the new center which will also give users access to high-value multimedia workstations. Above all, the Center, under the management of Dr. Andreas Degwitz, will give approx. 5.000 students in Cottbus – of whom 25 percent come from abroad – access to a vast pool of knowledge.

And as the BTU president is at pains to emphasise, “The new Center should become a meeting and contact place with an outreach far beyond its own region. And it should be open for everyone.”

New concepts for mediating knowledge and life-long learning are also being planned, along with alliances with companies in the region.

Take the communications department, for instance, where famous names of today are teaching the movers and shakers of tomorrow. The TV presenter and chair of Germany’s most famous political chat show, Sabine Christiansen, devotes several weekends of her time to practically oriented seminars on “TV Journalism” whilst media master Thomas Gottschalk gave a guest lecture on the relationship between “Media and Communication”. Because here too the rule applies “good networking is of the essence” and should never be limited to mere cables and data.

The new lighthouse of the information age received aggregate funding to the tune of Euro 22.8 million, from the federal government, the state governments, the state of Brandenburg and the European Union whose ERDF alone contributed Euro 11.4 million.