BIG’s High-Rise Building Breaks Ground in East Side Berlin

BIG’s High-Rise Building Breaks Ground in East Side Berlin

Projected by 2023 and selected by competition, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) designs a 142 meters high-rise, the third tallest building in Berlin. Located close to the Warschauer station and the Mercedes-Benz Arena, The EDGE East Side will be a vertical hub of 65,000 square meters that connects two of Berlin’s most vibrant and artistic suburbs: Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg.

Blending contemporary urban requirements and natural elements, the structure will feature 360 views of East Berlin and 36 floors of shared and dedicated workplaces. Some building sections will serve organizations or individuals focusing primarily on sustainability, education, or social issues. The tower will also host Amazon with room for up to 3400 employees.

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Sited in the historic Warschauer Straße thoroughfare, the EDGE will be in the heart of one of Berlin’s hotspots, the East Side, which also features the most extended remaining section of the Wall and the Oberbaum Bridge. As s part of a new wave of healthy buildings that embrace the idea that offices should not only serve a function but engage the surrounding communities, the first four levels will be accessible to the public as a gathering point. As well as welcoming companies like Amazon, EDGE East Side contemplates spaces for versatile usage across the first five floors, available to companies of all shapes and sizes and semi-public use.

The high-rise building façade is a fully unitized double-skin aluminum curtain wall, with automatic blinds in the facade cavities. The terraces, set every two floors along three strips over the volume, provide greenery in semi-public and public spaces. The 36 floors are served by 14 elevators that reach a speed of 21.6 km/h, or 20.6 seconds to get to the rooftop from the ground floor.

Urban planning and architectural quality assurance are being audited during the project through a collaboration with the Berliner Baukollegium [Berlin Construction Committee] under the chairmanship of Senate Building Director Regula Lüscher. In addition, the building is platinum pre-certificated by the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), as well as the targeted WELL v2 Core & Shell Gold certification by the International WELL Building Institute.

Focused on environmentally conscious design, from the use of circular products and VOC-free materials to world-class energy management, EDGE East Side is setting the passe for future constructions. Bjarke Ingels Group’s Integrated Sciences Center at Claremont Mckenna College also broke ground in late September 2022. BIG is also working on the National Juneteenth Museum in Texas alongside the architect-of-record, African-American-owned design firm, KAI Enterprises, and the design of the new education Campus on the Island of Esbjerg, Denmark,