Quartier am Rathauspark | Baumschlager Eberle Architekten

Combining affordable housing, shops and offices, green space and a climate-friendly power supply, Berlin-Lichtenberg’s new Am Rathauspark Quarter boasts high land-use efficiency and a wide range of potential uses with a slant towards contemporary technology and architecture. As design competition winners, Baumschlager Eberle Architekten were invited to create six buildings for a prominent part of this two-hectare development zone at the junction of Möllendorffstraße and Frankfurter Allee, two of Berlin’s major thoroughfares. The intersection is now marked by a 64m-high office tower which, together with an open perimeter-block development comprising businesses and shops, creates the structural framework for the new Stefan Heym Platz.

Our client, HOWOGE Wohnungsbaugesellschaft mbH, was recently awarded a Platinum Certificate for a Sustain-able Office Building by the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) for the office element of the scheme (13,650m²). What is so special about this highest-ranking of the DGNB certificates is the way it addresses performance issues. As well as providing the figures to back up the usual set of environmental characteristics, beneficiaries must also answer an array of questions about the economic, socio-cultural, technical and process-related aspects of their building.

In the words of DGNB Chair Prof. Alexander Rudolphi, “What better proof that HOWOGE’s new building meets the very highest sustainability standards in an integrated manner than a DGNB Platinum Certificate? This is a great example of successful urban densification through infill.”