Office Building "Goethestr 34"
The design for the office and commercial building Goethestraße 34 is characterized by its particular location at one of the central inner city interfaces of the city Frankfurt am Main. In the immediate vicinity of the Opernplatz, the corner building not only communicates between the square and street spaces that begin with it, but also is an important point of orientation in the inner city. The building begins with the Goethestraße, which was built between 1892 and 1894 as a through street, connecting Goetheplatz to the Opernplatz. As a shopping street for the luxury segment, it complements the metropolitan retail market in Frankfurt. Through its new entrance structure, the Goethestraße is redeemed from its urban Cinderella-like.
During the Gründerzeit-period the type of the corner house attracted special attention, as the edges of the buildings meeting each other at the crossroads were fundamentally architecturally emphasized. Properly formulated, the corner house created tension in transition from one to other urban spaces - a tension that could be relieved through the protruding from the rows, narrowing or superelevation. To transfer this type, the corner house, into our period without neglecting the materiality and design vocabulary of the existing building from the 1950s was also the source and inspiration for the design. The building Goethestraße 34 shows how corner houses can be interpreted and designed nowadays.
The place where a building stands is essential for design with its history, its culture and its materials. During the Second World War and the reconstruction phase, not only many buildings, but above all also the uniqueness of historically valuable urban context of the buildings, squares and streets, were destroyed, as did the spiry entrance building of the Goethestraße. The present building take up the form of the original building from the 19th century. At the intersection between Goethestrasse and Großer Bockenheimer Straße, the existing building is supplemented by a building extension, which with a round corner encloses the road area, which at this point was turned into the remaining area. The urbanspace is formed on the basis of the original historical situation, the alignment of the streets and the Opernplatz are re-established. Materiality and roof shape, on the other hand, are based on the post-warbuildings of the 1950s, a conservative designed office and commercial building with a slightly cantilevered flat roof.
With the reconstruction and renovation of Goethestraße 34, there were the chance to supplement the metropolitan ensemble at the Opernplatz. The Impression of ensembles is conveyed through the uniform and bright natural stone cladding of the individual house facades at the square, where an opera house stands in the middle. In selecting materials was the idea of integrating the building sensitively into this valuable ensemble paramount. Bright, descaled natural stone, the so-called limara limestone from Portugal, determines the impression of the building. A high degree of detailing contributes significantly to the success of the building, which are naturallyconsidered to fit into its urban context. In the twilight the curvature of the corner will be emphasized by foil light ceilings in the representative spatiality inside the building. In this way has the corner building an almost sculpturally effective superelevation in the dark.
