Six architectural competitions for the new Heidestrasse quarter: Exhibition shows designs in the historic grain test warehouse (“Kornversuchsspeicher”)
- With the Heidestrasse quarter, a centre piece is being created on an area of around 85,000 square metres in the Europacity at Berlin Central Station
- From 7 to 11 March 2018, all the designs of the participating international architectural firms for the six areas will be on display in a joint exhibition.
- By 2023, a new city district will be built
Berlin, 6 March 2018: The architecture in the future Heidestrasse quarter is varied and modern, and some buildings with their facades are reminiscent of the former use of the 85,000 square metre area north of Berlin’s main railway station as a railway site and commercial location. For the first time, all the results of the architectural competitions for the Heidestrasse quarter, which belongs to the Europacity development area, will now be presented in a joint exhibition. The winning designs for the six areas of the new district as well as all the competition works by the participating international architectural firms can be seen in the historic granary. This evening, the exhibition will be opened together with invited guests by Regula Lüscher, Senate Building Director and State Secretary for Urban Development, and Thomas Bergander, Managing Director of Quartier Heidestraße GmbH.
The architectural competitions for Quartier Heidestrasse
have been held since November 2016 and were decided within one year. The ROBERTNEUN Architects office was awarded a prize for the central local supply centre with a large supermarket and further shops as well as apartments. Construction on this first area began in the autumn of last year, which also marked the start of the Heidestrasse quarter.
Commercial block
In the west of the area, parallel to the tracks of the railway line, an approximately 550-metre-long commercial block will be built, which was designed by the EM2N office. In the ten connected and differently designed buildings, five of which will set accents in the horizontal structure as high 12-storey buildings, around 105,000 square metres of office and commercial space as well as a small proportion of retail will be created. For the creative and innovation economy, open and flexibly designed office landscapes as well as co-working spaces for better exchange will be offered in particular.
In addition, several building blocks will be erected along Heidestraße, providing a mix of commercial space on Boulevard Heidestraße with shops and restaurants on the ground floors and apartments in the rear. A total of 860 rental apartments will be built in Heidestrasse, of which 215 will be subsidized apartments. The winners of the competitions for the so-called mixed areas are CKRS Architekten, Collignon Architekten, ROBERTNEUN Architekten and gmp Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner.
The architectural designs for the residential areas are differentiated and very different.
For example, Collignon architects plan colonnades on the ground floor of their building on the central triangular square, which also borders on the local supply centre. While loggias will be formed in the residential floors to form the square, there will be balconies in the courtyard. The design by gmp Architects, on the other hand, whose two buildings are connected to Nordhafenplatz, will have facades of light grey-silver brick and brass balustrades, so that accents will be set in warm colours.
The architects have also designed several city squares, which will have a high quality of living and ensure liveliness in the urban quarter. In the warm seasons, the owners of restaurants and cafés will be able to set up tables and chairs there.
Regula Lüscher, Senate Building Director and State Secretary for Urban Development
, praises the architectural diversity of the new quarter: “For six areas with a total of 60,000 square metres of land area and 260,000 square metres of GFA, 52 architecture and planning teams developed designs so that 33 jury members could select a winning design for each area. In less than a year, the composition to an urban whole has succeeded. By the best selection an above average quality in the country wide comparison could be obtained. For one year, ground floor uses, lively public spaces, trend-setting working hypotheses, modern living concepts, good and lasting working culture as well as identity-forming urban development were discussed and opinions and decisions were fought over. A lively city is created by a lively discussion culture. The exhibition opened today documents the diversity of the future Europacity”.
Thomas Bergander, Managing Director of Quartier Heidestraße GmbH, says: “We want our tenants and employees to feel at home in our offices. The city squares are to become beautiful meeting places in the neighbourhood where people enjoy spending time. Thanks to the competitions, we have a very diverse and varied architecture. We have thus succeeded in giving the Heidestrasse quarter its own distinctive identity. In this way, we also contribute to the high quality of urban development in Europacity”.
Thomas Bergander, Managing Director of Quartier Heidestraße GmbH,
says: “We want our tenants and employees to feel at home in the offices here. The city squares are to become beautiful meeting places in the neighbourhood where people like to spend time. Thanks to the competitions, we have a very diverse and varied architecture. We have thus succeeded in giving the Heidestrasse quarter its own distinctive identity. In this way, we also contribute to the high quality of urban development in Europacity”.
Within one year, Quartier Heidestraße GmbH organised independent architectural competitions for the six areas of the quarter, which were held in coordination with the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing, the Mitte district and the Berlin Chamber of Architects. The exhibition with the winning designs of the architectural competitions for the Quartier Heidestrasse can be seen from 7 to 11 March 2018 in the Kornversuchsspeicher, Heidestraße 20c, 10557 Berlin. The exhibition is open daily from 13.00 to 18.00.
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