Description

Urban context

On a site that had been vacant since the early twentieth century and had been
used as a parking lot, two eight-story, U-shaped slabs frame an urban square 108
meters long and 32 meters wide. Located not far from Kurfürstendamm, these
residential and commercial buildings fill in the perimeter of two open blocks
from the late nineteenth century and continue the typical Berlin eave line.

Ground-floor zone

Restaurants and cafés face the spacious pedestrian urban square. A fountain
integrated into the stone surfaces provides a spatial termination and obscures
the noise of traffic with the sound of water. Two-story colonnades expand the
space, offering protection from the weather and creating a subtle demarcation
between the shopping zone and the public open space. The inner courtyards are
planted with large trees and continue the feel of the neighboring courtyard
spaces. Spacious passageways and lobbies suggest the private world of the
interior courtyards outside from the arcades.

Building structure

The building, which extends as high as eight floors, houses both apartments and
stores, offices, and a hotel. Located on the seventh floor of the south wing and
on the roof is a day-care center with its own lobby and elevator service, to
which the angled colonnades provide a spacious entrance. The building is
articulated by a clearly rhythmical arrangement of stairwells for vertical point
access. Beneath the square is a two-story parking garage with around four
hundred parking places.

Facade

Austere, monolithic stone facades of grayish-green granite and colonnades with
art deco lamps line this urban plaza, which recalls Italian piazzas. Between the
two-story colonnades and a continuous attic floor the building interprets the
classical theme of the European block from the late nineteenth century: base,
center, and roof. Distinct, slightly molded facades unite into a large-scale
form of harmonious tectonics.

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Originally published in: Ulrike Wietzorrek, Housing+: On Thresholds, Transitions, and Transparencies, Birkhäuser, 2014.