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By Langhof®

The building with its urban mix of stores, offices and apartments is situated at the Leipziger Platz, what used to be one of the noblest plaza of old Berlin, in immediate vicinity to the Potsdamer Platz.
The building has been planned for the Commerz Grundbesitz-Investmentgesellschaft mbH (the capital investment company for the open-ended property fund Haus-Invest) and has been completed in May 2003. Presently we are commissioned with the completion of the interior for the tenant who is going to rent the entire office space.
Right from the outset, the design was aimed at that potential target group which is looking for a representative, contemporary and elegant location for their company or themselves. A central concern in Christoph Langhof's design for this project was to create a building serving high representational needs that concurrently gives extremely sensual experiences to the viewer.

On the plaza of Leipziger Platz, LANGHOF® was commissioned Wert-Konzept Berlin to conceive an office and commercial building for Commerz Grundbesitz-Investmentgesellschaft mbH: a building intended to convey big-city individuality as well as exclusivity to its users by providing an urban mix of stores, offices and apartments.

Langhof®

Langhof®

Right from the outset, the design was aimed at that potential target group which is looking for a representative, contemporary and elegant location for their company or themselves. It was essential to create an address at Leipziger Platz. These different objectives created a field of productive tension with the very strict guidelines for the design, and so, the decoration and ornamentation of the structure were chosen as central principles of the building’s design.

Langhof®

Langhof®

The plaza façade of the eleven-story building is divided up into a two-story plinth zone for businesses, a five-story central zone for offices, and a penthouse zone (called Attika in German) with four stories of apartments. In contrast with the traditional forms of floors just being added on top of each other and successive series of windows, a design was opted which expresses the change in the interior life of the building. In alternating emphasized vertical and horizontal design fields, and by using different material manifestations, each area was given its own form of expression.

Langhof®

Langhof®

Using bow windows extending over two stories, these windows being surrounded by stainless steel, and taking granulated sandstone and travertine to clad the narrow wall sections, which was moulded into a large, moving meander, the plinth zone temptingly harks back to the culture of big-city stores.

This zone is followed by the five-story area of the offices. Its apertures establish a link to the horizontal window bands of architectural modernism, but now pick up the ornament of the meander again as a three-dimensional relief.

Langhof®

Langhof®

Rising vertically up to the sky, the set-back penthouse residential zone, with its regular alternation of strips of French windows of the same height as the story and the ornamentally perforated aluminum screens give the impression that the building is gradually losing its material nature, is stripping off the weight of its building corpus and is imperceptibly merging with the sky.

Langhof®

The design of the twelve apartments is luxurious metropolitan and generous and open up panoramic vistas of the cityscape through the large expanses of glass facing to the south in the back of the building. Aim of the project was to create a building serving high representational needs that concurrently gives extremely sensual experiences to the viewer.

The result is a unique address at one of the most elegant plazas of Berlin, a building that will give its users and all inhabitants of the city a new feeling for the urban culture of a metropolis, a feeling of urban self-esteem.

Given a new form, new materials and a new context, it provides the traditional architectural means of ornament and decor with a new attaction, giving the Stadtpalais an unmistakeable dynamic presence in the fixed context of a Berlin block.


LANGHOF ®
MISSION STATEMENT
Buildings and cities can be compared to brand-name products that must be designed so as to be attractive enough that people want to buy them.
Hence, the question must be asked: What is the collective image motivating the target groups now and in the future? What are the images of the respective project to which future tenants, buyers and users or the citizens in the public spaces will be pleased to relate to? What stories do the house, the urban quarter or the city have to tell? Just as a Western can hardly be imagined without cowboys, gunfights and wide-open spaces, architectural structures as well must acknowledge the collective images which they are informed by and which they refer to. Images awaken memories, produce dreams and create new realities. The new types of architecture and the new urban spaces that are to be created offer enormous projection opportunities. It is a space into which people’s dreams, memories and longings can be projected And this opportunity should be made use of. Design is entirely subject to the effect it intends to generate. Compared with the power of images and the quality of their effect, the distinction between copy and original and the question of authenticity play a relatively minor role. Just like a good story, a good atmosphere doesn’t necessarily need to be authentic or one hundred percent true. It must simply be believable and allow room for the play of individual fantasy. Both should awaken curiosity by the impressions they create, and should take their own place within the realm of emotions and senses.
Our goal is to, as part of the value creation process, create an independent and believable brand personality for our clients’ buildings, which creates added value in economic, cultural and aesthetic terms.


MANAGEMENT BOARD
Christoph Langhof, architect. He studied at the Technische Hochschule and at the Hochschule für Ange-wandte Kunst, both in Vienna, and at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, and completed a postgra-duate course at the Akademie für Bildende Künste in Berlin. From 1987 to 1989 he was a Professor at the Architectural Association in London, from 1990 to 1991 Visiting Professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt and since 1995 he has been Professor at and Director of the Institut für Städtebau und Raumplanung (Institute for Urban Planning and Area Planning) of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has been working as an architect in Berlin since 1978.
As managing partner, Christoph Langhof is responsible for the material and creative-artistic orientation of the firm and for methods and strategies for conception and realiza-tion processes.


Christine Margreiter set up an internationally active cultural center in Innsbruck (Austria) in 1985 and was its director until 1993. She was the Cultural Commis-sioner of the Prime Minister of Tyrol from 1993 to 1995, was responsible for marketing and communi-cation for the Wiener Festwochen cultural festival from 1995 to 1997, and has been with LANGHOF since 1998, concentrating on marketing. In 2002 she graduated from the Real Estate Academy at the European Business School with the qualification Real Estate Economist (ebs).
Christine Margreiter is, as managing partner, responsible for the organizational management and marketing and communication strategy of the firm. In the area of project processing, she is responsible for the development of concepts regarding potential uses, target groups and marketing.

Address: Leipziger Platz 9, Berlin-Mitte
Initiator: IVG Immobilien AG
Developer: Wert-Konzept-Berlin Holding KG
Owner: Commerz Grundbesitz-Invest-mentgesellschaft
mbH
Area: 2.665 qm
Gross florr area: 14.400 qm
Useful area: 11.800 qm, devided in 1.500 qm shops, 7.900 qm offices, 2.400 qm apartments
Parking lots: 76
Start of work: October 2001
Completion: April 2003
Architecture: LANGHOF ®
Christoph Langhof
Linienstraße 214, 10119 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30 8847980 - Telefax: +49 (0)30 8812617