TCHOBAN VOSS Architekten

Stralauer Platz is a city square in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg between the Ostbahnhof and the north bank of the River Spree. Laid out in the 18th century in the direction of the Stralau peninsula, it received its current name in 1823. The 2348 sqm plot contained a disused office building, which has since been demolished. In 1936 a six-storey structure was added to the west of the Kontorhaus as an administrative building for Gasag. During the GDR era, this served as a vocational school for VEB Energiekombinat Berlin.

The new development is a two-part complex consisting of an eight-storey hotel in the eastern part and a seven-storey office building in the western; there is a shared two-storey underground car park. At the point where the hotel abuts the office building, the complex is interrupted by a two-storey, approximately 12-metre-wide ‘window on the Spree‘, which serves as a visual connection.

The cubature of the buildings harmoniously fits into the listed, historical urban structure and continues the height of the eaves of the surrounding buildings. The hotel part of the complex is of a conventional construction with filigree ceilings and load-bearing walls of masonry or reinforced concrete. The office building has a reinforced-concrete skeleton construction and a stiffening staircase core. The clinker exterior façades give each part of the complex a dynamic appearance with its own distinct character.

The façade of the hotel is divided into alternating window fields that are separated by clinker bars with matt-pastel and iridescent colour patterns. These emphasize the horizontal orientation of the buildings’ appearance. On the north and south façades this regular, strict façade division is interrupted by the publicly accessible ‘window on the Spree’. This has a glass façade on the ground floor overlooking Stralauer Platz and the River Spree. Facing the river, the façade grid is articulated by a single-storey socle and a central risalto. The window bays on the ground floor and seventh floor have staggered recesses in the lintel area in addition to lateral flanges. The second special element is the ‘sky terrace’: an equally wide, single-storey, fully glazed opening on the north and south façades, which is a counterpart to the ‘window on the Spree’.

The façade of the office building, on the other hand, is vertically structured by continuous clinker brick bands in a red brown colour. Horizontal clinker bars on every second storey suggest double-height office floors. The regular arrangement of the almost square window fields gives the façade a calm, generous character and alludes to the design of industrial buildings.

The main access to the hotel lobby is from Stralauer Platz. There is a second entrance in the ‘window on the Spree’. In addition to the 174 rooms, a conference area for approximately 152 people, and the hotel bar on the ground floor, there is an extensively landscaped south terrace with access to the breakfast room facing the river. The top floor has a roof terrace with a 131-m2 ‘Sky Bar’. The other terrace areas on the second and seventh floors are non-accessible green roofs. Access to the office building with lobby and the six office floors is also directly from Stralauer Platz. The floors here have a clear height of approximately 3.05 metres and allow flexible use for open-plan offices, cellular offices, or mixed functions. The non-accessible roof areas here are also greened. The east roof area on the second floor and the roof area on the sixth floor are accessible terraces for use by office staff.

The entrance to the underground car park is located at the north-western corner of the site in the vicinity of the office building and can be accessed from Stralauer Platz. The two basement levels provide 50 parking spaces for cars and bicycles, five of which are barrier-free and 15 of which are for electric cars. All public areas will be barrier-free.