Project

EBP office building near the site of the former Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin

The scope of EBP’s planning activities in Germany includes its own new office building in Berlin. The focus of this project was on the seamless and slender façade made of cast-in-situ concrete and the energy-efficient, low-permeability building envelope behind it. The biggest challenge was to enable the construction of the low-permeability building envelope despite the fact that the inner shell and the outer concrete facade would already be in place at the time of the envelope’s installation.

Designed by the Basel-based architectural firm Miller & Maranta, the EBP office building in Berlin features a uniquely seamless and slender concrete façade that was awarded a prize for distinguished concrete design by the Association of German Architects (BDA) (LINK). With a different structure on all four of sides of the building, the façade appears to respond appropriately to its surroundings. The slender verticals and pronounced horizontal orientation give the façade a decidedly elegant appearance on the railway side of the building, while the ground-level arcades and massive verticals on the representative canal side give it a stately appearance.

While less visually arresting, the low-permeability building envelope on the upper levels behind the facade was no less demanding in terms of its planning and execution. Made of a special prefab panelized facade of fully insulated light-metal profiles, the envelope was successfully installed without external maintenance joints and a distance to the exterior concrete façade. All of the windows in the upper levels can be opened and possess locking gap regulators. Exterior vertical Venetian blinds, elegantly mounted in the façade behind the concrete grid, provide protection against the sun.

At the ground level, the burglar-resistant façade has a light-metal mullion-transom construction, integrated doors and windows, and impressive 4-meter entrance doors that operate automatically. The roof of the building features a skylight that was given a minimal tilt of 2° and needs no shading elements.

Glass partitions with doors accessing the respective office spaces were installed in the open stairway. These partitions have a fire-resistance rating of EI30 and are also burglar resistant, sound-insulating and crash-resistant.

Owing to the high degree of innovation involved, the scope of the planning work performed by EBP extended down to the smallest detail. The fact that the contractors were able to directly execute all of these details on site was therefore especially gratifying.

Picture Credits: Felix Löchner

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