The nine-story office building on Bertha-Benz-Straße was completed as the fourth and final component of the “Lehrter Stadtquartier”, master planned by O.M. Ungers in 1994, directly southwest of Berlin’s main railway station. The design corresponds to the existing three buildings of the complex, for which clear directives were given for the volumetric form, height and materiality. Following these guidelines, the building has a “static” and planer façade facing the city, while the two façades facing the center of the quadrant are articulated by folded surfaces. Additionally, it is segmented into a three-part program of base, body, and penthouse. The generous floor height of the first two levels offers space for two lobbies, several retail spaces, while the upper seven floors provide office rooms and a terrace on the ninth floor.
Above the transparent pedestal, narrow vertical fins of “Sellenberger Muschelkalk”, a light-colored shell limestone rooted in the Berlin building tradition, form a curtain wall of veil-like lightness: varying in depth, the fins stagger over 3 divisions per floor height, a pattern that forms a diagonal incremental gradient like a fabric cladding that lightens the heaviness of the overall building volume.
Team
Klaus Reintjes (Project Architect), Ayax Abreu, Marian Beschoner, Ulrich Fuchs, Cynthia Grieshofer, Ina Reinecke, Ruwen Rimpau, Anna Saeger, Konrad Scholz, Morihide Seki, Antje Steckhan, Ludwig Uphues, Blake Villwock
Sustainability standard
DGNB Gold Certification
Client | Investor
Bertha Berlin GmbH & Co. KG, a joint venture between Hamburg’s Becken Development GmbH and the HanseMerkur insurance group
General Contractor
W. Markgraf GmbH & Co KG, Berlin, Germany
Construction Management
Witte Projektmanagement GmbH, Berlin, Germany
Structural Engineer
RSP Remmel+Sattler Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH, Berlin, Germany
Landscape Architect
Capatti Staubach, Berlin, Germany
Mechanical Engineering, Energy Performance, HVAC, Electrical Engineering
Reese Ingenieure GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg, Germany
Building Physics
Werner Genest und Partner Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH, Berlin, Germany
Façade Engineering
Priedemann Fassadenberatung GmbH, Großbeeren, Germany
Lighting Design
Bartenbach, Mainz, Germany
Photos
Stefan Müller, Berlin
Corinne Rose, Berlin
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