New City Quarter “Am Tacheles”

First partial opening of the new buildings at Tacheles and the renovated old building scheduled for this year

The development project with the new buildings “Am Tacheles” on Oranienburger Straße is approaching completion with great strides. The first buildings are scheduled to open in the fall of 2022.

Construction site of the new City Quarter “Am Tacheles” at Oranienburger Straße. April 2022.   Foto: C. Hajer

 

The new city quarter has been designed for working, living, shopping and culture. The mixed uses, including 265 apartments, are distributed in new and existing buildings on a site area of 23,346 sqm with a gross floor area of 143,000 sqm. By way of comparison, the building mass is about one and a half times that of Berlin’s Humboldt Forum or half that of Tempelhof Airport. Here, however, it is integrated into the structure of a historic block in the Spandauer Vorstadt.

Changing history and planning history

In 1908, the Passage department store, designed by Franz Ahrends, connected Friedrichstrasse and Oranienburger Strasse on this site. Most of the ensemble was blown up and cleared away in 1980-82 after severe war damage. The main building on Oranienburger Strasse remained a ruin and was used as the Tacheles artists’ house after the fall of the Wall.

Most of the block was demolished during the GDR era in the early 1980s. After that, the site remained undeveloped, and planned new buildings were never realized. Since 1990, the neighborhood has seen numerous changes in ownership and planning concepts.

In contrast to the controversial New Urbanist designs of the previous owners from 2003, the new buildings reflect more recent developments in contemporary European and Berlin architectural culture.

Urban master plan based on the course of the historic arcade

Herzog & de Meuron’s urban development concept is based on the course of the historic passageway. The project, with an investment volume of approximately 800 million euros, was realized with the participation of the Berlin offices of Grüntuch Ernst Architekten and Brandlhuber + Muck Petzet.

 

City Quarter at Tacheles Masterplan (c) pwr development

 

Herzog & de Meuron are best known in Germany for the construction of the Elbe Philharmonic Hall and in 2012 won the competition for the Museum der Moderne now under construction in Berlin’s Kulturforum. The office designed the master plan and 6 individual buildings together with architects Aukett & Heese.

The design follows the course of the historic passage and arranges ten new buildings and the existing Tacheles building around three publicly accessible squares. The largest of these is the Aaron-Bernstein Platz.

 

Since 43,000 square meters, about 30 percent of the gross floor area, are underground, the eaves heights could be kept within the urban context. In addition to technical building systems, parking spaces for 400 cars with charging stations and for 500 bicycles were also created in the basements of the various building sections according to the plans of RKW Architekten. The shell of the basement was built by Köster GmbH. The general contractor for the building construction was Hochtief Infrastructure. Civil engineering construction started in 2016 and the topping-out ceremony was held in 2020.

 

Striking architecture of the new buildings

Distinctively designed building volumes emphasize the entrances to the new quarter and create the connection to the surrounding urban space.

On Oranienburger Strasse, the first thing that catches the eye is the slender, towering residential and commercial building with loggias and round-arched windows. It is reminiscent of new buildings by David Chipperfield in the adjacent Forum Museumsinsel and Linienstrasse and forms the transition to Bernstein Platz.

 

Building for housing and commercial use “Oro” at Oranienburger Straße Rendering: (c) bloomimages

 

Just behind it, the gatehouse of the Tacheles forms the entrance to the passage. The international photography museum Fotografiska will open in the fall in the building, which has been restored in accordance with the preservation order and gives its name to the development project.

Its counterpart on Friedrichstraße is a large gatehouse with two suggested tower extensions. Oriented to the metropolitan scale of neighboring buildings on Friedrichstraße, the building directs the view into the depths of the passage.

 

Entrance building by Herzog & de Meuron at Friedrichstraße Rendering: (c) bloomimages

Contracts for the commercial space have already been signed with the REWE supermarket chain and the online retailer Autodoc, which will locate its headquarters and 400 employees here.

On Johannisstrasse to the south, two striking residential buildings and Johannisplatz form the link to the city quarter. The varied roofscapes with terraces and lounge areas are interesting.

The design of the partially greened roof terraces, the public and private courtyards was planned by the landscape architecture firm Vogt und Partner.

Since the opening of Potsdamer Platz 20 years ago, Berlin’s city center has undergone numerous mixed-use renovations and redefinitions.