DZ Bank Headquarters

The design acknowledges and represents the complexities of the site with one side facing the low-rise residential community, the other the city’s central commercial district. Unlike the more classical symmetry of the building’s predecessors, the multiple facades and volumes of Westendstrasse 1 permit a dialogue with the context in a modern language that is at once formal and informal. Opposites such as heavy and light and static and dynamic read and are resolved in the structure’s composition.

A curved office and residential tower of reflective glass and painted aluminum and topped with a two-story loggia and a dramatic cantilevered crown rises over a low-rise office podium with retail, a central winter garden, and underground parking. This lower portion connects to the surrounding residential community with blocks compatible with the scale of the neighborhood.