City House I.

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City-Haus I
Selmi high-rise
City House I.
Basic data
Place: Republic Square 6 ( Westend-Süd )
Construction time : 1971-1974
Architectural style : International style
Architects : Johannes Krahn , Richard Heil
Use / legal
Usage : Office building, bank
Owner : DZ Bank
Technical specifications
Height : 142.1 m
Depth: 12.1 m
Floors : 42 upper floors
Enclosed space : 200,000 m³
Building material : Reinforced concrete
Construction: Skeleton construction
Height comparison
Frankfurt am Main : 15. ( list )
Germany : 23. ( list )
address
City: Frankfurt am Main
Country: Germany

The 142.1 meter high City-Haus , also Selmi high-rise building , located in the district Westend in Frankfurt at the Republic Square. It was built from 1971 to 1974 according to plans by the architects Johannes Krahn and Richard Heil .

history

old facade (until 2007). The vertical stripe conceals an additional staircase that was added later

City-Haus I is also known under the name Selmi-Hochhaus after the Persian client Ali Selmi. The project was very controversial at the time . On the night of August 23, 1973, a fire broke out on the upper floors of the building shell, which was visible from far above the city and attracted many onlookers. The fire could not be extinguished until eight hours later, as the Frankfurt fire brigade was not yet equipped for extinguishing work at this height and the risers were not yet in operation. Many onlookers cheered the fire (“Citizens for Fire”), students are even said to have sung songs of mockery (“Today we burn Selmi's little house”). Arson was later named as the most unlikely cause of the fire, apparently a defective welding machine had set the wooden cladding on the 40th and 41st floors on fire. This major fire was the starting point for modern fire protection for buildings in Germany and the start of the career of the chief fire fighter Ernst Achilles .

In 1976 DG Bank (today DZ Bank ) acquired the high-rise and set up its headquarters there. In 1985, the head office was expanded to include a seven-story building (called City-Haus II ) on the neighboring property, and in 1993 DZ Bank also moved into the neighboring high-rise building at Westendstrasse 1 .

construction

The building is a reinforced concrete structure . It consists of a centrally located core group with external dimensions of 17.4 m × 14.2 m as well as two staggered storey tracts, each 40 m long and 14.1 m wide. In addition to the core, four internally arranged supports in each wing carry the vertical loads. Standard floors are 3.2 m high. The floor slabs are plate beam constructions . The panel thickness varies between 10 cm and 20 cm, the total construction height between 40 cm and 60 cm. The high-rise stands on a floor slab up to 4.15 m thick with an area of ​​2000 m².

Redevelopment

From October 2007 to December 2008 City-Haus I was extensively renovated according to plans by the architect Christoph Mäckler and received a new facade and an overall lighter appearance. During the renovation period, the tenants could be kept to a minimum, as the new facade was hung from the outside of the old facade during the week and the old facade was only removed on the weekends. The new facade reduces the building's energy consumption by around 35 percent. The cost of the renovation was 53 million euros.

See also

literature

  • Wolf-Christian Setzepfandt : Architecture Guide Frankfurt am Main / Architectural Guide . 3. Edition. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-496-01236-6 , p. 56 (German, English).
  • Raman Kürkchübasche: Hochhaus Platz der Republik in Frankfurt am Main. In: Concrete and reinforced concrete construction. No. 7, 1975, pp. 157-164.
  • Adrian Seib: City-Haus I. In: Wilhelm E. Opatz (Ed.): Frankfurt 1970–1979. Architecture guide. Friends of Frankfurt. Junius Verlag, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-88506-814-3 , pp. 76-79.

Web links

Commons : City-Haus  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ City skyscraper at CTBUH
  2. ↑ Frankfurt and its skyscrapers (hr-online.de)
  3. ↑ How Frankfurt became Mainhattan. ( Memento from October 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (bad-vilbel-online.de)
  4. ↑ Lighter facade for the Selmi high-rise. In: FAZ. April 25, 2007. ( online ( Memento from May 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ))
  5. ↑ VR BAUREGIE plays a key role in high-rise modernization. ( Memento from August 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 37 ″  N , 8 ° 39 ′ 36 ″  E