Designed by Barkow Leibinger, A nine-story office building of 25,000 m2 is completed on Bertha-Benz-Straße as a fourth and final component of the ?Lehrter Stadtquartier?, directly south-west of Berlin?s main railway station. The building is in direct dialog with the three other volumes of the ensemble, for which clear master planning directives were given in terms of the buildings? volume, height, and materiality.
Photography: Stefan Müller
The design guidelines for the quarter were refined in 2006 following an urban development competition via the office Auer + Weber + Assoziierte, designed as a further continuation of the existing development plan: Oswald Mathias Ungers? 1994 urban master plan for Humboldthafen, which isolates the railway station while sectioning off the adjacent area to the west into 7 plots based on the traditional Berlin block structure. Photography: Stefan Müller
In addition to stipulations for a uniform building height and fa̤ades clad in light-colored stone, the design guidelines call for surface folding that modulates in response to one another on the inner-facing fa̤ades of the ensemble. Thus, the building has a ?static? appearance towards the city on the outer-facing south and west sides, while the two fa̤ades toward the center of the quadrant dynamically undulate. In doing so, three horizontal bands Рbase, body and top floor Рare articulated.
Ground Floor Plan
To compensate for the sloping terrain of the property, the buil...