TAURUS office and commercial building at Biebergasse 6 - 10 and Börsenplatz 7 - 11 in Frankfurt am Main.
The new building, called TAURUS, was built on an existing underground car park in a central location in Frankfurt's city centre. It has two architecturally different façades – one facing Biebergasse and another facing the car-free Börsenplatz. The building has 7 floors with a large south-facing terrace on the 6th floor. Above ground, 15,380 m² are available. They are used for retail, gastronomy and offices.
TAURUS gives the entire middle section of Biebergasse an aesthetic quality that did not exist there before. Thanks to its width and innovative façade concept, a new urban sense of space is created in this place, an aesthetic emotion beyond pure practicality. Architecture achieves this primarily through two structural means: firstly, through the frames made of natural stone, with their sculptural depth reminiscent of many great moments in architectural history. Secondly, through the format-filling, floor-to-ceiling and non-mirrored windows to the south, which result in a transparent building that remains open to the sun and the gaze of passers-by inside.
The main player is the natural stone elements. They complement the transparent façade with the physical presence of classic urban architecture and transform the thoroughfare, banalized by shapeless, smooth shop window buildings into an endearing, fascinating place with an unmistakable identity. In the past, people passed by here carelessly to reach one of the nearby shopping areas as quickly as possible – now they have already reached their destination, in the lively, metropolitan city of Frankfurt. [...]
The building inspires with the rarely daring combination of lucid transparency and spatial-physical power. This is the result of TEK TO NIK's almost 20 years of initially theoretical examination of natural stone, futuristic buildings in Italy and the relatively unknown Prague Cubism of the late 20s of the 20th century. The highly innovative composition of a complex geometry of precisely sawn natural stone elements was finally achieved with the production partner Hofmann Naturstein, for the first time at Mainzer Landstraße 47 in Frankfurt. Architects are often amazed because the plasticity planned with extreme precision is not folded from aluminum sheet or cast from cement, but consists of Jurassic limestone. In addition, the floor-to-ceiling glazing, which invites light and eyes, has not led to a banal office grid monotony. Rather, the system is varied four times. The new building fits into the relevant environment, which is also characterised by natural stone and haptically designed facades. Inside, the TAURUS is characterized by relationships to a post-modern, open office life. On the one hand, the office space can be easily converted into other forms of collaboration at any time. Secondly, three large terraces and a green inner courtyard expand the light experience of the users. And thirdly, the façade elements can also be experienced from the inside in their sculptural physicality, as they are attached in some places in front of the window as if floating.
U-values building envelope:
Exterior wall = 0.23W/(m2K)
Facade panel = 1.30W/(m2K)
Floor plate = 2.19W/(m2K)
Roof = 0.20W/(m2K)
Window (Uw) = 1.30W/(m2K) Class 3
Glazing (Ug) = 1.10 W/(m2K).
Source: TEKTONIK Architekten
Photos: Andreas Stimpert, Wonge Bergmann, Alexandre Sladkevich
