H10 Hotel, Berlin – 2011

The new hotel H10 was built on the Joachimstaler Straße near the Berlin Kurfürstendamm. A listed old building had to be rebuilt on a plot of approx. 3,100 m² and extended with a new building for the use of the hotel. This clinker construction by the architect Otto Bratring from the year 1889, which is located directly on the street, serves as the identity-donating heart of the new ensemble. Due to its good condition, its outer appearance is almost perfectly preserved. The building is characterised by its clear horizontal and vertical structure. This “jewel box” was enlarged by an eight-storey cross building which is connected to the main building by means of a hall on the ground floor.

The new building should not be seen as competing with the old building at all, but rather as presenting its background. With its regularly-punctuated facade, it is kept very simple. This simplicity is interrupted above the pedestal by the surface structure following the principle of randomness. Stones with different depths have been walled-up flush with the inner side of the building so that the outer side shows a very vivid surface with suggestions of the historical brick architecture. The walled-up clinkers are triply staggered and provide the extensive side wall as well as the simple punctuated facade with a tactile, almost organic structure. The very precisely-defined reveals and building corners consciously recede as a contrast to the arbitrarily-occurring masonry structure in order to emphasize the cubic appearance of the new building. In the area of the pedestal, the reference to the existing building can be seen – not only from the point of view of optics (clinker format and colour). Here, ornaments and proportion of the existing facade are respectfully interpreted in a modern way in order to unite new aspects with old ones.