Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs

Berlin, Germany

Photo © Stefan Müller

Federal Buildings

Architects: Kleihues + Kleihues

Location: Wilhelmstraße 49, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Year: 2008

Today’s seat of the Federal Ministry for Work and Social Affaires was the first office to be installed in the skeleton of the former Reich Ministry for Propaganda on Wilhelmstrasse in 2000. The first construction stage of the rebuilding and extension activities was realized between 1998 and 2001. It comprised reconstruction of the main building from the 1930s including court yard design with plantation of greenery, conversion of the Kleist House – the former Von der Heydt bank from the year 1912 on Mauerstrasse – into an information and visitors centre as well as its extension by a generous, glass roofed entrance hall that provides central access to the whole set of buildings; all of it was carried out according to the regulations for listed buildings. The accordingly elaborated south extension was carried out between 2004 and 2008 and provided for construction on the estates between the main building on Wilhelmstrasse and the Ritterschaftsbank at the square today named Zietenplatz, as well as on the empty site between the Ritterschaft and the Thuringian State Representation on Mohrenstrasse. The new constructions’ design is founded on the filtration of neo-classical elements from these different architecture epochs for one modern architecture that respects and reflects the history of the place, and it corresponds with the transformation of the main building that has already taken place.