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TECU® PATINA
TEXT AND INFORMATION: HAMBURG CITY WAREHOUSE
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Charm on the Docks
The guiding vision in current discussions in Hamburg on urban development and architecture is the city’s return to its historic heart, the Elbe River. Refurbishment of the city warehouse at Grossen Elbstrasse 27 is the first project in a plan to renovate the abandoned docks west of the fish market and create an inner-city district. The construction work was completed in May 2001 under the direction of the British Hanseatic firm Alsop & Störmer, winners of the 1994 investor’s competition award.
Architects Jan Störmer and William Alsop worked together for many years in their offices in London and Hamburg. The building of the ”Big Blue” government headquarters in Marseille (1990 – 1996) is a well-known result of their collaboration. Another of their successes, the Peckham Library in London, was inaugurated on March 8, 2000 and awarded the Sterling Prize later that same year. The grabbing appearance of this new media centre in the Peckham district of London was underscored by William Alsop’s choice of wall cladding in green, pre-patinated TECU copper sheets – the same material selected for the redesign of the city warehouse in Hamburg.
Jan Störmer has already made his mark in the Hanseatic city of Hamburg with clear, poignant designs that reveal his unique sense of material, form, colour and light. The City Archives, the Schümann wing of the Museum of Art and Industry and the Side Hotel, a thirty meter high building illuminated by New York director Robert Wilson, are impressive examples of his work.
The wood docks, named after the original type of fixings used in their construction, were built in 1724 and once served as an emporium for fish and grain. The challenging task of assimilating the charm of the old dock district with the experience of living and working there was successfully accomplished by Jan Störmer and his architects. They formed a building ensemble out of the remains of an old warehouse and a grain silo. With the skilful addition of new storeys to the building, it has become a landmark in the city’s harbour skyline.
A two-storey glass cube rises out of the new development between the two buildings. The former silo now houses a restaurant on the base floor with a large terrace on the riverbank. The five storeys above it have been converted to studios. From the street, the building is represented by a three-storey foyer and elevator, both constructed in front of the northern facade. Analogous to the traditional loading balconies of the old warehouse, blue, glassed-in steel balconies were added in front of the facade. The four-storey addition containing 28 high class apartments appears to be a frameless glass lamella system from the outside and lies directly on the cornice edge of the old red warehouse wall. The west facade and the central access on the north side of the building are decked in a cladding system of TECU-Patina copper sheets installed in horizontal double standing seams. The material, here in the form of a patina green element rising as high as the building, combines the old warehouse and the new glassy addition into a homogenous unity by the modern application of this classic material.
On the south side of the former silo, office suites were ”implanted” in nine storeys of the refurbished building; the remaining space serves as a parking garage for 134 cars on 17 levels that is operated by an unmanned parking system. The new, 12 meter high saddle roof is an interpretation of the historically documented gable facing the river. Also clad with TECU-Patina sheets in double standing seams, the roof surface design creates a relationship of form and material with the buildings of Hamburg’s warehouse district. A relationship that does not detract from the modernity of this object of urban architecture with its patchwork structure, classical geometry and colour – formed from closed, glassed areas – and the strictly prismatic construction.
The variety of future uses for the buildings refurbished by Jan Störmer Architects correspond to the history of the buildings as places of housing, working and storing and to an urban typology. In its form and material, the new city warehouse strengthens the identity of Hamburg’s oldest docks, giving them a charming, patina green landmark.
Technical Data:
Data:
28 apartments (2,800 m²)
Office/Commerical (7,000 m²)
Restaurant (500 m²)
Gross area per storey: 18,000 m²
Usable area: 10,300 m²
Gross volume of space: 67,000 m³
Construction Costs:
approx. DM 40 million
Start of Planning: 1994
Start of Construction: July 1998
Completion: May 2001
Project Participants:
Owners:
Volksfürsorge Versicherungsgruppe, Hamburg
Project development/ General Contractor:
Garbe Bautechnik GmbH
Valentinskamp 18, 20354 Hamburg
Architects:
Jan Störmer
(formerly Alsop & Störmer Architekten)
Michaelisbrücke 1, 20459 Hamburg
Design: Stefan Wirth, Christophe Egret, M. Azhar
Project Manager: Constanze Biesterfeld
Construction Planning: Boris Krusenotto, Thomas Weiser, Felix Dimigen, Shaban Yazici, Anuschka Kossak
Support Structure:
Assmann beraten und Planen GmbH, Hamburg
Plumbing:
Ridder und Meyn, Hamburg
Copper in Architecture and the Building Industry:
KM Europa Metal AG, Osnabrück
http://www.tecu.com
Project Data:
City Warehouse Redesign and Addition
Grosse Elbstrasse 27, 22767 Hamburg
Building Uses:
Apartments, office and commercial space, restaurant
Photographer:
KME / Dirk Robbers, Hamburg
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Contact:
KME Germany AG
Klosterstrasse 29
D-49074 Osnabrück
GERMANY
Phone + 49 (0) 5 41 / 3 21-43 23
Fax + 49 (0) 5 41 / 3 21-40 30
info-tecu@kme.com
www.tecu.com
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