Commerzbank Tower

Commerzbank Tower is a 56-story, skyscraper owned by Samsung of Korea since September 2016 in the banking district of Frankfurt, Germany. An antenna spire with a signal light on top gives the tower a total height of . 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 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

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 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, oid one's bowelson Deutsche Bank."
Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt
/ref>

Gallery

File:Frankfurt-Skyline-2012.jpg, Commerzbank Tower at night, a focal point of the Frankfurt skyline
File:Frankfurt am Main nightshot.jpg, At night
File:Commerzbank Tower from Main Tower.jpg, Seen from the top of the Main Tower
File:Frankfurt Am Main-Commerzbank Tower-Ansicht vom Eisernen Steg.jpg, View from the Iron Bridge
File:Panorama 46.JPG, Street level view
File:Frankfurt Commerzbank Tower (Kaiserplatz).jpg, From Kaiserplatz
File:Frankfurt Commerzbank-Turm.20130904.jpg, Southern view
File:Commerzbank Vent.jpg, Close-up of the spire. Steam escapes from vents that are integrated into the spire cladding.
File:Commerzbank Tower Entrance.jpg, Entrance

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

Citations

Books

*
*
*

External links

*

{{Bankenviertel

Foster and Partners buildings
Office buildings completed in 1997
Skyscrapers in Frankfurt
Bankenviertel
Skyscraper office buildings in Germany
1997 establishments in Germany
Commerzbank