JSWD has designed a new office complex named Neuer Kanzlerplatz in Bonn, Germany. This building is constructed at the junction of the southern part of the city center, the former government district, and the city’s “Museum Mile.”
The newly constructed building supplements the existing high-rise ensemble of the Posttower (Helmut Jahn), the “Langer Eugen” (a high-rise that formerly housed the German Parliament, Egon Eiermann), and other UN buildings at Bundeskanzlerplatz. The three buildings have a consistent facade structure, which gives them the appearance of a single visual entity.
A vertical tower rises from one of the buildings, which is slender and seems to float over a glass foyer. This high-rise has 28 stories and more than 100 vertical meters, which anchors the office complex within the city skyline. The three buildings have an irregular layout, which nestles them into the corners of the triangular plot and creates an outdoor public space in the middle.
This public space connects to the neighboring residential area, which people can freely walk through. The white facade grid of buildings two and three (5 to 7 stories) comprises load-bearing precast concrete elements. This allows the depth of the elements to be utilized constructively while ensuring the offices are kept free of columns or supports projecting into the interior.
The concrete facade only extends behind the glass fronts in the foyers of the three buildings. The cladding on the ceiling and rear wall in the interior is also made up of triangular fiberglass-reinforced concrete elements. These elements are up to 11 meters long in the three-story foyer of the high-rise. Four slender hinged supports bear the load of the upper stories that project up over the foyer, which seems to float above it. The facade grid comprises cream-white, acidified architectural concrete with a double-layer hydrophobic coating. The exterior details of the Neuer Kanzlerplatz is also visible and feelable in the structure’s interior.
Project Info
Client: Art-Invest Real Estate, Cologne
Architecture: JSWD, 1st prize competition 2015
Completion: 2023 (Demolition/blasting Bonn Center in March 2017)
Structural design: B + G Ingenieure Bollinger and Grohmann GmbH
Building service engineering: KBP Ingenieure GmbH, Munich
Traffic planning: BSV, Aachen + Schüßler-Plan Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH, Düsseldorf
Landscape: RMPSL, Bonn
Site: 15,300 sqm
High rise: 28 floors, Height = 101,5 meters
Rental space: 66,000 sqm
Office workstations: 4500
Seating Gastronomy: 600
Underground parking spaces: 950
Bike parking spaces: 450
Photos: Christa Lachenmaier, HG Esch, Jeppe Hein
