| Architect |
Mark Braun Architects |
| Date
Built |
2008 |
| Location |
Beside Friedrichstrasse
Station |
| Description |
|
This
building sits on a site beside the River Spree
and Friedrichstrasse Station. It
comprises two curving interconnected towers
occupied by Ernst & Young.
Apparently the original design called for a
forty-storey building but in the end it was
scaled back to a much more modest 12-storeys
responding to concerns expressed by the
residents of other buildings in the vicinity. The site has interesting historical connections because it was here in the early 1920s that the architect Mies van der Rohe proposed to locate a startling glass skyscraper. His first design in 1921 was replaced a year later by an even more radical plan. He was proposing a new and apparently untried building system involving steel structures that eliminated the need for the walls to be load-bearing. This allowed him to propose a glass-walled building. Neither of his designs came to fruition but Mies van der Rohe went on to build numerous glass skyscrapers in Chicago and New York. I have seen it suggested that Braun's design was in homage to Mies van de Rohe's unbuilt towers. |
|
|
Spreedreieck
- Friedrichstrasse 140, Berlin, Germany
|
