GSW Headquarters
Sauerbruch Hutton. Berlin, Germany
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Name of work in English
GSW Headquarters
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Name of work in original language
GSW Hauptverwaltung
Prize year
EUmies Awards 2001
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Work Location
Berlin, Germany
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Studio
Sauerbruch Hutton
EUmies Awards 2001 Shortlisted
Collaborators
Program
Office
Completion
2000
The idea of conglomerate growth is not only accepted but put forward as a model for urban development. So the new ensemble responds as much to the baroque logic of the street plan as it does to the rules of 19th-century urbanism. At the same time it absorbs the object-like quality of the 50s tower and registers the confrontational space which had developed between the high-rises on either side of the Berlin Wall. In this combination of the disparate spatial configurations of consecutive generations, the new high-rise slab is the element associated with the present and the future.
The design of this building is generated by a concern for the workplace in the city, and by a committment to an architecture that is economical with the (built and natural) resources of the environment. The new highrise not only offers an exemplary working environment in its passive control of energy consumption, at the same time it redefines an architecture in which the value of sensuous space is reassessed.
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