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 with Oranienburger Strasse on this site. Most of the ensemble was blown up and cleared away after severe war damage in 1980-82. The head building on Oranienburger Strasse remained as a ruin and had been used as the Tacheles artists’ house since the fall of the Wall.

The largest parts of the block still fell victim to demolition during the GDR era at the beginning of the 1980s. After that, the property remained undeveloped, and planned new buildings were never realized. Since 1990, the neighborhood has seen numerous changes of ownership and planning concepts.

In contrast to the controversial designs of former owners from 2003 in the style of New Urbanism, the new buildings now reflect more current developments in contemporary European and Berlin building culture.

Urban master plan is based on the course of the historic arcade

Herzog & de Meuron’s urban development concept is based on the course of the historic passage. The project, with an investment volume of approximately 800 million euros, was implemented with the participation of the Berlin offices 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 have already been signed for the commercial areas with the REWE retail chain and the online retailer Autodoc, which will move in here with its corporate headquarters and 400 employees.

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 interestingly designed here.

The design of the partially greened roof terraces, the publicly accessible and the private courtyard areas was planned by the landscape architecture office of Vogt und Partner.

Since Potsdamer Platz opened 20 years ago, Berlin’s city center has seen numerous mixed-use restorations and redefinitions.

It will be interesting to see how the new city quarter is received by the public.