SpreeDreieck

This triangular 4200qm plot just north of Friedrichstraße Station has been one of the most contested building locations in Berlin since early in the 20th Century. It was architect Bruno Mohring who first proposed building a high rise on the spot, to illustrate Berlin’s cutting edge urban development. Opposition lead him to scrap his plans and in 1929 a new competition was held and Mies van der Rohe won acclaim with his design of a glass tower which, while never built, became one of the most famous projects of Modernism. Unfortunately WWII put the Modernist project on ice and later the post-war division of the city was expressed here in the form of the Palace of Tears – a border crossing between East and West Berlin.

The glass tower is finally coming back to Friedrichstraße though. After a post-war restitution claim was settled in 2000 the site was purchased by a Hamburg investor who quickly arranged for an archictecture competition. The winning design was that of Mark Braun Architects which proposed an arrangement of two curving interconnected glass towers, in homage to Mies van der Rohe, while preserving the historically protected Palace of Tears and working around the requirements of Friedrichstraße Station, one of the city’s densest traffic hubs. Originally planned as a 40 story complex, it has been scaled back to twelve due to opposition from the residents of neighboring structures and, while the project has been plaqued with financial and logistical difficulties, it looks as though Friedrichstraße may finally have the high rise it has been waiting for.