Office Building Kaptstadtring 5, Hamburg, Germany

Three-pane high-rise building in City North

City Nord is an American-styled office park, conceived as a new model for well-lit and accessible office space outside of Hamburg's tragically war torn center. In line with Le Corbusier's Athen's Charter demanding "Licht, Luft, Sonne" ( Light, Air, and Sun) for living and working, City Nord began in the late 1950s as an ensemble of freestanding office buildings surrounded by ample green space. The most accomplished of these is Arne Jacobsen's former HEW/Vattenfall Building from 1969, a series of four vertical, exquisitely proportioned volumetric slabs slide against each other on a generous parcel of land. The master plan, after 60 years, reflects a heterogeneous mix of historically significant buildings and more banal contemporary ones.

The new office building on Kapstadtring 5, which won first prize in a competition for HANSAINVEST Real Assets, is located in City Nord, now recognized as a protected ensemble. The masterplan remains heterogeneous and continues to evolve, with distinct buildings that are formally and spatially independent. There is no apparent overarching master planning strategy beyond the placement of independent parcels next to each other. Our approach to this context was to design a building that is both formally autonomous and responsive to its neighbors in scale and height. The building is unique yet contextual, with facades that are commercial in nature but subtly manipulated and differentiated in response to each building volumes they enclose.

The building consists of three parallel vertical slabs offset in both plan and height, combining the advantages of a differentiated volume with strong horizontal and vertical interlinking of interior spaces. This design also maximizes outward views while maintaining a minimal footprint. The shortest building slab standing at 30 meters, aligns with the scale of its northwestern neighbor, while the tallest, at 60 meters, culminates on the southeastern side. This tallest slab offers a visual counterbalance to the landmarked former office building of Claudius Peters AG, which remains prominently visible from all major axes, preserving its clear and distinctive presence on Kapstadtring.

With around 28,000 square meters of gross floor area above ground, including 15,500 square meters of office space, the new building provides space for a total of 1,300 workstations. The insurance company Signal Iduna consolidated its employees from several locations in the city into this space. The two- and three-story layout of this office levels offers flexible configuration for various office concepts, allowing for diverse workspace designs depending on need. In collaboration with Sassan Philipp Haschemi & Associates, the corporate design and art consultants for SIGNAL IDUNA, a comprehensive interior architectural concept was developed. One of the central features is an open-space structure, enhanced by smaller units for team collaboration, as well as high-quality phone booths and soundproof alcoves for focused individual work.