architect: TEK TO NIK Architekten and Generalplaner GmbH, Manfred Wenzel, Frankfurt/Main
location: Frankfurt, Germany
year: 2015
The Frankfurt developer Max Baum Immobilien and the Munich investment company Competo Capital Partners purchased a site in the Frankfurt banking district that was then occupied by an office building from the Sixties. The new design came from TEK TO NIK Architects and its leading designer Manfred Wenzel.
They conceived an eight-storey office and administration building, approx. 40.000 sq ft plus underground car parking, that was planned to the precise requirements of its future tenants from the financial services industries. Each floor can be divided into units ranging from 2.000 sq ft up to 8,000 sq ft. Apart from the high quality and flexible design of the offices and communal parts it is the building’s natural stone facade that has turned FortySeven & Co. into a landmark building in Frankfurt’s contemporary built landscape.
Solid natural lime stone elements, each up to 800 kg heavy and milled by computerized 5–axis CNC machinery according to the data from the architectural 3-D model, frame the 64 large scale square windows. Like a chessboard the facade's 8 m x 8 m pattern is structured logically around the central two-storey high entrance to the building. The entire front facing Mainzer Landstrasse works as a highly thermally insulated curtain facade. A facade of that kind had never been realized in Germany before. Every detail – from the hidden drainage to the precisely calculated effect of the daylight shadows – was given utmost attention.
The striking moiré effect is created by each of the 3 m long three dimensional pilaster strips that project up to 40 cm. Either a projecting or a recessing "star" in the form of a node, configured of four crossing pilaster strips, makes up the basic structure of the facade's underlying pattern. Viewed from different perspectives the facade appears to "move" in a wavelike rhythm – that is even more striking as the total weight of the facade comes up to 116 tons of solid Portuguese lime stone.
FortySeven & Co. was completed during spring 2015 and has been awarded the German Natural Stone Prize, 2015. It has also gained the distinction "Winning Product“ at the Iconic Award, 2015.
client: Projektgesellschaft Mainzer Landstrasse 47, Max Baum Immobilien, Frankfurt/Main
Competo Capital Partners GmbH, Munich
architect: TEK TO NIK Architekten und Generalplaner GmbH, Manfred Wenzel, Frankfurt/Main
structural engineer: Bollinger & Grohmann GmbH, Frankfurt/Main
management: Dobberstein Architects, Frankfurt/Main
natural stone façade: Hofmann Naturstein GmbH & CO. KG, Werbach-Gamburg
