After deliberating over the stellar proposals of three renowned firms, BIG, Büro Ole Scheeren, and OMA, Berlin-based media company AXEL SPRINGER SE has just announced that Rem Koolhaas' design is the winning proposal for their new office building.
The task of the competition was to create additional space for the media company, particularly its digital offers, and thus design a workplace fit for the future of online media. Koolhaas' design, which features a large 30-meter high atrium or "open valley" with interconnected terraces and public workspaces for both individual, collaborative, and mobile work, won favor with the jury for its forward-thinking concept. As Dr. Mathias Döpfner, Chief Executive Officer of Axel Springer SE, commented: “[Koolhaas] presented the conceptually and esthetically most radical model. The fundamental innovation of working environments will support the cultural transformation towards a digital publishing house."
For his part, Koolhaas had this to say: “It is a wonderful occasion to build in Berlin again, on this historical site of all places, for a client who has mobilized architecture to help perform a radical change…a workplace in all its dimensions.”
See more of OMA's winning proposal, after the break...
Regula Lüscher, Senate Building Director at Berlin's Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment, further praised the proposal, noting that: “Rem Koolhaas drafted a building which only on second sight reveals its secret, architecturally formulating a new kind of collaborative working at its core. The concept offers a strong symbolic force as it leads the course of the Berlin Wall diagonally through the building, thereby creating an atrium and spectacular interior, which addresses the unification of this city. Thus, Axel Springer continues its own architectural history in this location.”
You can read OMA's description of their winning design - as well as see BIG and Büro Ole Scheeren's proposals - here.
