Barkow Leibinger

Barkow Leibinger
Schillerstraße 94, D–10625 Berlin
T +49(0)30 315712 -0 F -29
info@barkowleibinger.com
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Residential Highrise, Alexanderplatz, Berlin - 3rd Prize

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 is proposed of facetted stacked building volumes clad in glass that respond to and mediate a wildly diverse urban context. Further articulation of the tower (the folded facades, differentiation, and loggias) make apparent, programmatically, dwelling (hotel and apartments). This 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 for one.

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 in response to a multitude of views and orientations around 360 degrees. The tower marks a logical spatial conclusion to the Karl-Marx Allee while helping define/ mark 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 further situates the tower urbanistically while reflecting upon itself the dynamic cacophony that characterizes Alexanderplatz.

Project Information

Architects — Barkow Leibinger, Berlin, Frank Barkow, Regine Leibinger

 

Team — Michael Ahlers, Sebastian Awick, Martina Bauer, Sonia Cohan, Thomas Day, Nadja Jeske,  Daria Khapalova, Jonathan Kleinhample, Elizaveta Mosina, Ulrich von Türckheim, Blake Villwock, Tobias Wenz, Jens Weßel

 

Program

Hotel, Apartments

 

Location

Berlin, Germany

 

Size

47.910 sqm (above ground)

 

Competition

1. Phase: 05|2013 - 08|2013

2. Phase: 09|2013 - 01|2014

Client

Hines Immobilien GmbH

 

Structural Engineer

B+G Ingenieure Bollinger + Grohmann GmbH, Berlin

 

Mechanical Engineer

Rentschler und Riedesser, Filderstadt

 

Energy Design

Transsolar Energietechnik GmbH, Stuttgart

 

Façade Consultant

B+G Ingenieure Bollinger + Grohmann GmbH, Berlin

 

Fire Protection Consultant

hhpberlin, Ingenieure für Brandschutz GmbH, Berlin

 

Cost Consultant

BAL Bauplanungs und Steuerungs GmbH, Berlin

 

Traffic Consultant

R+T Topp, Huber-Erler, Hagedorn, Darmstadt

 

Elevator Consultant

Jappsen Ingenieure GmbH, Berlin