OSA Ochs Schmidhuber Architekten GmbH

The existing Atlas high-rise building in the Werksviertel district of Berg am Laim in Munich was planned in the 1980s and completed in 1982. Our conversion and refurbishment work started in 2016 and was completed in the late fall of 2019.

The existing Atlas high-rise building had a façade clad with light-colored metal panels and an adjoining high-rise garage. The fourteen-storey, 62-metre-high existing building also included a 13-ton orange plastic sphere with a diameter of 7.5 meters, which was installed on the tower roof in 2001. The high-rise building with the orange sphere was considered as a landmark in the urban fabric of the state capital of Munich.

We dismantled the tower down to the supporting structure, and the adjacent high-rise garage gave way to a five-storey plaza building facing Rosenheimer Strasse and a four-storey plaza building facing the Werksviertel, into which the tower was embedded. This created two inner courtyards and six terraces of different sizes.

Environmentally friendly materials were used for the conversion and construction of the new Atlas tower, and the architecture and interior were optimized from an economic and ecological perspective. The tower's interior was generously designed with flexible floor plans in the spirit of New Work. The two-storey underground car park holds 230 parking spaces and the grounds have 100 bicycle parking spaces. The orange plastic sphere on the roof of the Atlas Tower, taken over from the existing building, is illuminated at night and shines over the Werksviertel. The Atlas high-rise and the plaza building will be used for offices, while some areas will be used for catering facilities for the users.

The new Atlas high-rise was given a new look with its dark, double-skin, rear-ventilated façade made of aluminum and glass. The façade concept is the result of a creative examination of the existing tower building. The corners of the tower ashlar were originally only recognizable as such on the outside. Inside, they were slanted and covered in concrete, which provided the thematic template for the new façade concept: This octagonal basic shape was transformed into that of a rectangle over two storeys, and then back to an octagon over the following two storeys. This created a kind of geometric cascade structure at the corners of the tower and the theme that characterizes the entire concept of the new Atlas high-rise was found: The diagonal.

Our Atlas high-rise has received multiple awards and was awarded the Gold LEED certification, the Iconic Award 2020, "best of best", Innovative Architecture category, and in 2021 also the Global Green Business Award. In June 2022, the Atlas Tower will take part in the "Architectural Tours" organized annually by the Bavarian Chamber of Architects.