Fintech-Hub

 

Located in the heart of Berlin at Bahnhof Zoo, the ten-story former headquarters of Berliner Bank are being revitalized as a Fintech Hub – Berlin's largest start-up tower and Europe's largest hub for FinTech companies.

 

The 6-meter-high hall areas, formerly VIP and cashier hall of the bank, were developed by us in the course of tenant expansion and adaptation of two anchor tenants. They have a special status within the building, being the two largest shares of space in the whole complex.

 

Revitalization in this case infers optimisation of the building’s life cycle through conversion (instead of the usual demolition and new construction), and thus a sustainable use of building materials.

Accordingly, in the parts of the building that we have reworked to the wishes of the tenants, we continued to pursue this idea and have always placed conversion before demolition and replacement.

 

In one of the halls, the is setting up its capital city branch, a think tank designed as an open space with modular fixtures and furniture – the entire area can be variably adapted to different usages, for example as an event location.

 

Particular attention is paid to the careful optimisation of the material life cycle: for everything that is removed, it is first necessary to consider whether it can be repurposed, redesigned; to be working within the existing framework, as formulated by Walter Gropius: "To design is to dance in bounds".

For example, the former cashiers booth – made of bulletproof glass – is repurposed as a lounge area, and the medium-height-furniture partitioning creates a unified spatial experience, while at the same time allowing for division into separate areas.

 

Challenges were posed by the high-end technical standard in terms of lighting technology and acoustics, the building code requirements for an event space, the high degree of variability and flexibility of the room modules and, last but not least, the budget.

 

On the other side of the hall, a space is being built for the Weizenbaum-Institut e.V. in the public area, which was last remodeled by Jürgen Sawade in 1990 and features an eye-catching mezzanine floor and natural stone cladding.

The irony here is to convert an infrastructure heavily based on analog hanging files into a digital hub for one of the leading institutes in thinking about digitisation.

 

Short construction time and the building substance are putting the sustainability goal to the test here: Is it possible to have an ecological impact within a complete conversion in a tenant fit-out, where usually things have to move quickly and the new-bought interior isn’t intended to last forever? Further hurdles are fire protection, escape routes, ventilation and air-conditioning cabinets; adding to the restructuring within an already highly differentiated system these present serious challenges.

 

The implemented solution consists of transformation on the smallest scale: careful reuse in the existing building, e.g. by sorting and reprocessing cabinets and partitioning elements. The complete removal would have resulted in about 45 containers of waste, but transforming most of the interior on-site, the site managed with a total of 4 containers for disposal: Preservation instead of waste, transformation instead of environmental pollution. This doesn’t yet take into account the new furniture that would otherwise have been required – which would have to be inexpensive according to the budget, and therefore have quite an ecological impact – and its transport.

 

So the Change Hub, with various usage scenarios and variable seating concepts was created through detailed conversion (and restrained additions) to the existing furnishings, with both low costs and environmental balance – from an originally completely unsuitable rental space intended for analog operation.