The Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart is the safest building in the world in the event of a fire. Experts were quick to agree on this point. When smoke develops, high-pressure air is blown from 144 openings in the wall into the museum’s courtyard.

This creates an artificial tornado of about 40 metres high. The smoke is ‘sucked’ into the eye of this tornado and then extracted through a ventilator located inside the upper part of the building. The system behind the simulated tornado was developed by the Imtech Research and Development Centre in Hamburg on the basis of a laboratory model. The concept has been patented (ROM-Drall®) and is unique in the field of ventilation technology. Reason enough for the Mercedes-Benz Museum to successfully claim an entry in the Guinness Book Of World Records. The Imtech technology behind the artificial tornado opened a world of new architectural possibilities. A back-to-front world, where a tornado saves lives instead of claiming them!

See picture: the central foyer of the Mercedes-Benz Museum, the world’s safest building in the event of a fire