In a competition that ultimately crowned Frank Gehry as winner, Berlin’s Barkow Leibinger placed third with their 150-meter “faceted stacked building” proposal clad in glass. Aimed to be Berlin’s tallest building, the apartment and hotel tower is planned to be the city’s first high-rise residential development since the 1970s.
From the Architect: Like Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz this is not the site of an historical Berlin or a place for sentimentality. It will never be a beautiful, harmonic, unified whole or a “stadtkrone”. Rather it is a place that will continue to reflect the dissonance, fragmentation, and layered nuances of a truly modern pathos.
In response a 150-meter tower we proposed of facetted stacked building volumes clad in glass that respond to, and mediate, a wildly diverse urban context. Further articulation of the tower, such as the folded facades and balconies, make dwelling apparent. This, the first tower in a master plan established in 1993, anticipates a future of high rises in Berlin/ Alexanderplatz that rethinks what a high rise might mean in a city with no built historical precedents.
The diversely sized stacked volumes that make up the tower rotate slightly, step by step, in relationship to each other on a trapezoid shaped site, responding to a multitude of views and orientations. The tower marks a logical spatial conclusion to the Karl-Marx Allee, while helping define Alexanderplatz spatially. The large bulk of the tower is domestically scaled-down by the stacked volumes and folded facades, which simultaneously generate exterior spaces (loggias), floor to ceiling glazing for improved views over the city, and optimum orientations to the sun while protecting from strong winds.
A tower of glass that is both transparent and reflective further mediates between the public urban realm and the private interior one. Glass situates the tower urbanistically, while reflecting upon itself the dynamic cacophony that characterizes Alexanderplatz.
Competition
Residential High-rise Berlin-AlexanderplatzAward
Third PlaceArchitects
Location
Berlin, GermanyArchitect in Charge
Frank Barkow, Regine LeibingerDesign Team
Michael Ahlers, Sebastian Awick, Martina Bauer, Sonia Cohan, Thomas Day, Nadja Jeske, Daria Khapalova, Jonathan Kleinhample, Elizaveta Mosina, Blake Villwock, Tobias Wenz, Jens WeßelClient
Hines Immobilien GmbHStructural Engineering
B+G Ingenieure Bollinger + Grohmann GmbH, BerlinMechanical Engineering
Rentschler und Riedesser, FilderstadtEnergy Design
Transsolar Energietechnik GmbH, StuttgartFaçade Consultant
B+G Ingenieure Bollinger + Grohmann GmbH, BerlinFire Protection Consultant
hhpberlin, Ingenieure für Brandschutz GmbH, BerlinCost Consultant
BAL Bauplanungs und Steuerungs GmbH, BerlinTraffic Consultant
R+T Topp, Huber-Erler, Hagedorn, DarmstadtElevator Consultant
Jappsen Ingenieure GmbH, BerlinArea
47910.0 sqmPhotographs
Courtesy of Barkow LeibingerCompetition
Residential High-rise Berlin-AlexanderplatzAward
Third PlaceLocation
Berlin, GermanyPhotographs
Courtesy of Barkow LeibingerArea
47910.0 m2
