Tower 185

Tower 185
	Tower 185, seen from the Deutsche Bank skyscraper, May 2013
Basic data
Place:	Friedrich Ebert Annex 35–37 ( Gallus )
Architect :	Christoph Mäckler
Use / legal
Usage :	High-rise office building
Main tenant:	PricewaterhouseCoopers
Client :	Vivico
Technical specifications
Height :	200.0 m
Floors :	51 upper floors
Elevators :	10
Usable area :	approx. 100,500 m²
Height comparison
Frankfurt am Main :	4. ( list )
Germany :	4. ( list )
Europe :	25. ( list )
address
City:	Frankfurt am Main
Country:	Germany

General view from the south

View from the courtyard in the base

The Tower 185 is a skyscraper in the district Gallus of Frankfurt near the Frankfurt Fair and adjacent to the development area European Quarter . Construction of the twin tower began in August 2008 and was completed in December 2011, with a total height of 200 meters (including technical floors). This makes Tower 185, together with the Main Tower, the fourth tallest high-rise in Germany.

planning

As early as 1998, the city of Frankfurt decided in the first skyscraper master plan that the buildings of the former Deutsche Bahn headquarters at Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage 35–37 could give way to a 185 meter high skyscraper. In the following years, however, nothing more was heard of this project.

The existing buildings were demolished at the beginning of 2007, after which the site lay fallow. In the summer of 2007, various newspapers reported that a lease had been concluded between the property owner Vivico and the auditing company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for Tower 185. This was officially confirmed in May 2008 when the project was presented to the public. The reason for the delay was evidently that Vivico still needed a neighboring piece of land for the realization of the tower, which was owned by the State of Hesse . In May 2008 the property passed into the ownership of Vivico.

PwC has leased 66,000 square meters of a total of around 100,000 square meters of office space on a long-term basis and has moved into the company's new German headquarters here. Until now, the company was located in the Mertonviertel in Frankfurt . The base building of Tower 185 was completed at the end of 2010 and occupied by some PwC departments.

draft

The Frankfurt architect Christoph Mäckler provided the design for Tower 185 . It provides a horseshoe-shaped base building from which the two high-rise halves with an aluminum-glass facade rise. These enclose a round glass middle part. According to Mäckler, Tower 185 should save at least 25 percent of the energy costs of a “normal” high-rise.

The building should achieve certification of the international LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ) seal of approval . LEED defines standards for environmentally friendly, resource-saving, sustainable building. Nevertheless, care was taken to ensure that a particularly large number of window workplaces are created and that the windows can be opened wide a fresh air gap.

construction

After the first work on the property began in August 2008 , the first groundbreaking ceremony was symbolically set on September 29, 2008 with the participation of Frankfurt's Lord Mayor Petra Roth , PwC board spokesman Hans Wagener and Christoph Mäckler . Wilhelm Brandt, press spokesman for the project developer Vivico, called the developing Europaviertel the “largest construction site in Central Europe”. At the celebration, new renderings of the winning design by Mäckler were presented, which showed a modified roof finish of the tower and suggested that the height of the tower including the technical structures had risen to over 185 meters. There was long speculation about the total height until Vivico announced it on Twitter in June 2010 : Tower 185 will be 200 meters high.

On June 1, 2010 the shell (which was carried out by Hochtief Solutions AG) reached a height of 100 meters, at the end of 2010 the total height was reached; the shell was completed with the last ceiling closure on March 2, 2011. The office tower was completed and occupied in early 2012.

Vivico was already planning to build a shopping and congress center with two high-rise buildings for office and hotel use ( Skyline Plaza ) as well as further office and residential buildings in the immediate vicinity of Tower 185 . The construction of the Skyline Plaza has now been completed.

Surname

The name Tower 185 comes from an early planning phase and referred to the height of 185 meters that was initially intended for the high-rise. Although the height of the building was eventually increased to 200 meters, the name was not changed.

Tenant

The main tenants are PwC and the law firm Mayer Brown . After the purchase of Booz & Company by PwC in 2014, the now strategy & strategy consulting business was also located in Tower 185. Other tenants include Excellent Business Center , PERM4 | Permanent Recruiting GmbH , the law firm Zeller & Seyfert , FelsCapital, Dow Jones News, CBRE Global Investors, Hyundai Capital Bank Europe and Winheller Rechtsanwälte & Steuerberater .