Just so story - design and construction of building for Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, Germany

Architectural Review, The, Jan, 1999 by Peter Davey

The architectural effects of unification are not to be found only in the central area. The Ludwig Erhard Haus is an attempt to reposition Berlin as a major element in the German economy and to engage the public with business.

The Ludwig Erhard Haus(1) is across the Tiergarten from the mighty works on the east side of the park like the Government quarter (p50) and Potsdamer Platz (p32). But it too is a product of the decision to make Berlin the capital. Immediately after reunification, the Berlin Chamber of Commerce (to which all companies in the city are bound by law to belong) decided to help to try to make the city a great centre of business again? and bring all its activities together in a 'communications centre', where members of the commercial community could meet, the (very small) Berlin stock exchange could have its floor, and trade associations could take offices.

The Chamber had a rather grim '60s office block but wanted a bigger and much more welcoming and permeable building. So the organization decided to develop on a site round the corner on Fasanenstrasse, one of the rather dull nineteenth-century streets which run north from the Kurfurstendamm; it was originally lined with tenements containing flats over shops, and is now largely converted to offices. A competition was held. The winner was Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners, with a design that maximized the volume that the site was allowed to contain under Hans Stimmann's policy of critical reconstruction (p30), which on this site mainly meant insistence on an eaves height of 22m.

The Grimshaw firm started, like many other British practices of the '70s by building sheds. I do not mean to be dismissive in saying this. The big shed is one of the most important of the modern building types we inherit from the nineteenth century: repetitive, refined in detail, economical, capable of enclosing very large volumes, and even of nobility - at Waterloo station Grimshaw's built one of the very finest train sheds ever made (AR September 1993). The Ludwig Erhard Haus is a sort of cousin of Waterloo, in that it is an arcuated building made on an irregular site, so generating a very complex envelope geometry, curving in both plan and section. This is not the kind of form that sits easily in a street full of tenements, and Stimmann's planners demanded that there had to be a vertical street-front up to eaves height. Above and at the back, the curves of the arches are exposed under a stainless steel skin, though they are scarcely visible from the street (except at the ends).

The arcuated structure was adopted not just because the practice is used to such things, but because it enabled the maximum volume of accommodation to be got onto the site within the planners' envelope (p62). And it allowed a radical approach to urban building. Grimshaw was concerned to ensure that, as is usual in cities, lower floors should be capable of change - if necessary on a very large scale. Upper floors of the Ludwig Erhard Haus are suspended from the arches on steel hangers, so the bottom two stories are free of vertical structure. He points out that if the stock exchange, for instance, fails,(3) something as large as his Oxford ice-rink (AR March 1985) could be moved into the lower floors with no problems of fit. Even if such a big user could not be found, it would clearly be possible to divide the space up in all sorts of ways.

As they stand, the lower two floors are welcoming and open to the public. There is a long gallery on the street side, which is empty in these photographs, but actually often occupied by exhibitions, and even when empty is used by passers-by as a sort of arcade. On its inner side is a curved restaurant or cafe, welcoming under a balcony and frilly canopy. It is open to the public as well as workers in the various organizations on the office floors above and it offers rather a decent and inexpensive lunch in a street notably lacking such opportunities. Light enters the long space not just through the double-height glass wall on the street, but from the back as well, where two atria can be glimpsed through virtually free-standing lift structures.

The huge atrium spaces bring daylight into the middle of the plan because they are totally glazed from top to bottom on the curved (east) side. In effect, they are very big winter-gardens onto which offices can open their windows (openable office windows are almost a requirement in Germany these days). Atrium volumes are largely warmed by waste heat, and they are ventilated automatically on hot days by panes that open automatically at top and bottom of the glazed carapace.(4) The spaces as they now stand are pretty austere - grey, very solemn, very Berlin. The architects had proposed that they should be relieved by large trees, but as yet these have not materialized, partly because the client is unwilling to find the money, and partly because the atria are frequently used for exhibitions, when all their floor spaces (it is said) are needed for display. But the spaces are much livelier when you look back from the glass towards the middle of the building. The tall west walls are open screens, with small silver lift cars, and glass bridges to link their landings to the office wings on each side. The cars have cladding made manually by a coachmaker in the south of England, and their little rounded helmet-like forms whizz up and down, animating the spaces.