Commerzbank Tower

Commerzbank Tower
General information
Type	Office
Location	Kaiserplatz 1 Frankfurt Hesse, Germany
Coordinates	50°06′38″N 8°40′27″E
Construction started	1994
Opening	1997
Cost	DM600 million
Owner	Samsung Insurance Corporation (sold for €620 million; sold-and-leased back until 2031 by Commerzbank)
Height
Antenna spire	300.1 m (985 ft)
Roof	258.7 m (849 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	56
Floor area	109,200 m2 (1,175,000 sq ft)
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Norman Foster
Developer	Commerzbank
Structural engineer	Arup Krebs und Kiefer
Main contractor	Hochtief AG
Other information
Public transit access	Willy-Brandt-Platz 11 Willy-Brandt-Platz
References

Commerzbank Tower is a 56-story, 259 m (850 ft) skyscraper in the banking district of Frankfurt, Germany. An antenna spire with a signal light on top gives the tower a total height of 300.1 m (985 ft). It is the tallest building in Frankfurt and the tallest building in Germany. It had been the tallest building in Europe from its completion in 1997 until 2003, when it was surpassed by the Triumph-Palace in Moscow. Since the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, the tower had briefly reclaimed its position as the tallest building in the European Union only to lose the title again in 2021 when Poland's Varso Tower topped out. The Commerzbank Tower is only two metres taller than the Messeturm, which is also located in Frankfurt and was the tallest building in Europe before the construction of the Commerzbank Tower.

Commerzbank Tower was designed by Foster & Partners, with Arup and Krebs & Kiefer (structural engineering), J. Roger Preston with P&A Petterson Ahrens (mechanical engineering), Schad & Hölzel (electrical engineering). Construction of the building began in 1994 and took three years to complete. The building provides 121,000 m² (1,300,000 sq ft) of office space for the Commerzbank headquarters, including winter gardens and natural lighting and air circulation. The building is lighted at night with a yellow lighting scheme that was designed by Thomas Ende who was allowed to display this sequence as a result of a competition.

In its immediate neighbourhood are other skyscrapers including the Eurotower (former home of the European Central Bank), the Main Tower, the Silberturm, the Japan Center and the Gallileo. The area forms Frankfurt's central business district, commonly known as Bankenviertel.

Features

Garden on the 19th floor of Commerzbank Tower

When the building was planned in the early 1990s, Frankfurt's Green Party, who governed the city together with the Social Democratic Party, encouraged the Commerzbank to design a 'green' skyscraper. The result was the world's first so-called ecological skyscraper: besides the use of 'sky-gardens', environmentally friendly technologies were employed to reduce energy required for heating and cooling.

Sky gardens

Commerzbank Tower is shaped as a 60-metre (197 ft) wide rounded equilateral triangle with a central, triangular atrium. At nine different levels, the atrium opens up to one of the three sides, forming large sky gardens. These open areas allow more natural light in the building, reducing the need for artificial lighting. At the same time it ensures offices in the building's two other sides have a view of either the city or the garden.

In order to eliminate the need of supporting columns in the sky gardens, the building was constructed in steel rather than the conventional (and cheaper) concrete. It was the first skyscraper in Germany where steel was used as the main construction material.

In popular culture

• Commerzbank Tower appears under the name Hurt Enterprise Headquarters as a vanilla stage 8 Euro-Contemporary building set in SimCity 4 (Deluxe or with Rush Hour).
• In 2007, Wrebbit released a 3D puzzle from the Towers Made To Scale Collection, which includes Commerzbank Tower and Messeturm in one box-set.
• In his 2011 book Boomerang, Michael Lewis describes a meeting with a German financier who claimed the top of the Commerzbank Tower contains a glass room that serves as a men's toilet from which, he joked, one could, "in full view of the world below, [void one's bowels] on Deutsche Bank."

Gallery

• 
  Commerzbank Tower at night, a focal point of the Frankfurt skyline
• 
  At night
• 
  Seen from the top of the Main Tower
• 
  View from the Iron Bridge
• 
  Street level view
• 
  From Kaiserplatz
• 
  Southern view
• 
  Close-up of the spire. Steam escapes from vents that are integrated into the spire cladding.
• 
  Entrance

Skyscrapers in Frankfurt

Skyscrapers in Frankfurt

500m
550yds

18

17

16

15

14

13

12

11

10

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

  

Tallest skyscrapers in Frankfurt am Main

1

Commerzbank Tower

2

Messeturm

3

Westendstraße 1

4

Main Tower

5

Tower 185

6

ONE

7

Omniturm

8

Trianon

9

Seat of the European Central Bank

10

Grand Tower

11

Opernturm

12

Taunusturm

13

Silberturm

14

Westend Gate

15

Deutsche Bank Twin Towers

16

Marienturm

17

Skyper

18

Eurotower

See also

• List of tallest buildings in Frankfurt
• List of tallest buildings in Germany
• List of tallest buildings in the European Union
• List of skyscrapers

References

Books

• Alt, Torsten (2014). Nachwuchsförderung in der bildenden Kunst: Eine Studie unter Einbeziehung der Akteure und Profiteure (in German) (revised ed.). Marburg: Tectum Wissenschaftsverlag. ISBN 978-3-8288-5767-4. OCLC 871614996.
• Sweet, Fay; Forbes, Andrew; Ahearn, Alison; Scott, Hamish (2006). 100 Marvels of the Modern World (illustrated ed.). Basingstoke: AA Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7495-4801-8. OCLC 225541344.
• Lewis, Michael (2011). Boomerang. U.S.A.: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-08181-7.

External links

• "Commerzbank Tower". A View on Cities. Archived from the original on 3 February 2007. Retrieved 22 February 2007.