DB Tower and The Brick, Frankfurt. Brick alludes to industrial past

"Architecture without inflated ego," is how architect Christian Schmidt describes the DB Tower and The Brick in Frankfurt's Europaviertel. The two urban building blocks were realized on the largest transformation site in the Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region. Project suspensions by Hagemeister ensure the integration of the office buildings into Albert Speer's urban master plan and set individual accents.

The elongated Europaviertel in Frankfurt is the last major inner-city transformation site in the Rhine-Main metropolis. Based on a master plan by AS + P (Albert Speer + Partner GmbH), a new district has been under construction in Europaviertel since 2005. On the site of Frankfurt's former freight station, housing for about 10,000 people, offices (about 30,000 workplaces), hotels, apartments, stores, educational and leisure facilities and parks are rising. An underground subway connection to the city center is planned for 2025.

Speer's master plan assumes building blocks along a representative axis, designed as a green, urban boulevard with 60-meter-high accents built at prominent points. Within this pattern, the DB Tower - the new office of Deutsche Bahn - and office building The Brick rose between 2018 and 2021.

"Architecture without inflated ego," is how architect Christian Schmidt of Schmidt Plöcker Architekten PartG mbB describes the concept of the two buildings. The Brick and the DB Tower were designed by the firm as two related urban building blocks that fit within Speer's master plan while having their own signature.

The DB Tower and The Brick owe this signature to, among other things, the competition-winning façade concept for both buildings by Aldinger Architekten from Stuttgart. The main form and ground plan of DB Tower and The Brick were fixed. The facades had to seek dialogue with the surrounding building blocks and at the same time present themselves as independent volumes.

"The facades refer to the history of the Europaviertel," Schmidt said. The historical reference to which Aldinger Architekten's facade concept connects: industrial brick architecture from the 1920s, with sculptural facades and large windows.

That reference is recognizable in the facades of "The Brick." The facades are framed in a double-height grid of masonry bands, provided on the floors with a receding cross of pennants. The masonry is done in brick strips, in a dark, reddish-brown project grading from Hagemeister with strong coal-burn accents.

The facade of the DB Tower was provided with stone strips in precast concrete elements.

On a double-height plinth, the 60-meter-high tower has 14 office floors with a repeating pattern of windows encased in slender brick piers with deep, profiled recesses. Christian Schmidt: "This results in a strong grid, with staggered profiling in dark gray aluminum in each window element." A dark red project grading from Hagemeister was used in the DB Tower, also with solid coal fire accents. Christian Schmidt: "For us, brick is a symbol of sobriety, durability and warmth. High-tech is indispensable, but ultimately a real building material is the interface between user and building envelope. Hagemeister's grades possess a unique texture, and brick is a durable material that ages gracefully."

Project details
Architecture: Schmidt Plöcker Architekten PartG mbB, Frankfurt am Main
Façade: Aldinger Architekten, Stuttgart
Brick: project grading
Format: The Brick (stone strips) DF 240x15x52 mm; DB-Tower (stone strips in precast elements) SF 215x20x65 mm
Masonry facade area: The Brick - 7,500 sq. ft.; DB Tower - 7,800 sq. ft.