Cape Town Ring 2 and 4
The office building Kapstadtring 2 and 4 is a building complex completed in 1968 in the Hamburg office city City Nord . The initiator of the construction and long-term user was the mineral oil company Esso Germany , from 2010 the insurance company Allianz took over the building. It has been a listed building since 2013 .
Construction and architecture
The design of the building began in 1964 with an architectural competition for which four prizes were awarded. The winning design by Jost Schramm and third place by Gert Pempelfort were very similar, so these two formed an architectural community to plan the building and, with Herbert Großner , integrated one of the winners of second place for the execution of the work. The client's specifications called for a flexibly usable building in which both open-plan and individual offices could be accommodated. It was planned for a maximum of 2000 workplaces, should have all the rooms necessary for operation, including a spacious data center , and provide a number of other service and sports rooms for employees in addition to the canteen and social rooms. As is typical of the time, parking spaces for motor vehicles were integrated into the lower floors from the start.
The construction phase began on August 17, 1966, the topping-out ceremony was on June 26, 1967, the move-in date on September 1, 1968. At that time, the building was the largest post-war office building in Hamburg, many problems related to the construction and building services of such large buildings therefore presented themselves at this point for the first time. Despite the relatively high and dry terrain for Hamburg, the subsoil proved to be difficult for a building of this size and required a foundation on more than 400 concrete piles that are up to 15 m long.
The building is divided into an extensive base area and the cross-shaped high-rise. The high-rise consists of four office wings with a common access core , in which there are not only fixed stairs and elevators but also escalators . The design and usage concept differ for the building parts oriented in north-south direction and those in east-west direction. The north and south wings are the longest, they contain the classic single and double offices on 9 floors and are clad with smooth facades made of dark brown glass. The east and west wings are shorter; they originally contained open- plan offices and, with the surrounding external galleries with white balustrades, create a clear contrast to the longer wings. The basement, with its two floors above ground and the basement level, houses the garage and building services. The entire entrance and reception area was relocated to the first floor, a courageous decision at the time of construction, as the planning to separate street level and higher pedestrian level in City Nord was initially carried out much later.
The total of 14 large rooms each have a floor area of 450 to 550 m². They can be easily converted into individual offices, with internal rooms taking over the functions of archives or meeting rooms. When Esso moved in, it was planned that the respective department could decide for itself whether the allocated space should be used in the form of individual or open-plan offices. The flexibility in the room layout has proven to be a major advantage of the building to this day.
The high-rise has its greatest extension of 158 m in north-south direction, in east-west direction it is almost 70 m wide. Of its 13 floors, 12 are above ground, they reach a height of 48 m above street level. It was planned and constructed as a fully air-conditioned building and will continue to be operated as it is.
Conversions and renovations
The first renovation took place in 1977 on the facade on the upper floors. The interior lighting was renewed in 1987, the facade was renovated on all floors in 1988, the floors were renewed in 1990 and the data cabling was modernized and in 1992 parts of the building's electrical system were replaced . From 1997 to 1998 the entire entrance area was redesigned and the furnishings from the construction period with granite floors and wood-clad walls were removed. A major overhaul and energetic renovation began at the end of 2009 and was completed in 2012. After the construction work was completed, Allianz took over the building in November 2012.
Photographs and map
Coordinates: 53 ° 36 ′ 5.2 " N , 10 ° 1 ′ 45.1" E
View from the southwest
East facade. The different design of the wings is easy to see.
Main staircase to the entrance level
Short west wing with outside stairs
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Representation of the building on the homepage of the property owner interest group City Nord. Retrieved August 29, 2019.
- ↑ Sylvia Soggia: City-Nord - Europe Model City of Modernity . Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-937904-83-2 , p. 100 .
- ↑ See aerial photos on the website of the engineering company PML. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
- ↑ Article about the beginning of the renovation on luechow-medien.de . Retrieved October 15, 2019,
- ↑ Brief overview of building renovation on the agn Niederberghaus & Partner GmbH website. Retrieved October 15, 2019.
- ↑ Brief overview of the project on the TAS KG website. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
- ↑ Article in The World on the Entry of the Alliance. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
literature
- Sylvia Soggia: City-Nord - Europe's modern model city . Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-937904-83-2 , p. 100-105 .
- Ralf Lange : Architecture in Hamburg . Junius Verlag , Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-88506-586-9 , p. 189 .
