Brunnenstraße/Voltastraße Block 240 Berlin, 1995 – 1996

Office and administration buildings as well as 266 apartments with shops and underground car park were built on the former AEG site. The new development on the eastern side of Brunnenstraße, which has been under construction since the 1960s, is very heterogeneous. The new development therefore aims at a clear, functional and architecturally convincing peripheral development. The roadside development is designed as a metropolitan concept which, in spite of its greatest possible clarity and simplicity, by no means dispenses with a differentiated approach to the specific characteristics of the location.

These include in particular the necessary and desirable upgrading of Brunnenstrasse, the opening of the development to the Humboldthain, the appropriate integration of Franz Schwechten’s orphaned AEG Gate and the urban and architectural correspondence with the new and historic buildings on the former AEG site. Special attention was paid to these aspects during the planning phase. The present concept is the result of a discursive design process in the course of which four alternative studies were presented and analysed.