The new Axel-Springer house by OMA opens in Berlin

  Four years after work began, the new building designed by OMA for the German publishing group Axel-Springer in Zimmerstrasse, Berlin, will be inaugurated next to the historic headquarters of the publishing house, completed in 1965.

The project,  result of a competition won by the Dutch studio in 2013, offers 52,000 square metres of workspace for over 3,000 employees.

The building has a trapezoidal plan punctuated by powerful circular pillars and is configured as a single compact volume of imposing scale, crossed by a large central void: a sort of theatrical cavea opening onto the city through a fragmented glass casket. Inside this large void, 45 metres high, 10 ground floors and 13 bridges overlap and create connections, allowing for an unprecedented expansion of the vocabulary of work spaces: traditional, informal, meeting and collaboration places.

In the face of a global pandemic crisis that has challenged the idea of large workspaces, Rem Koolhaas, architect and founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) responds as follows: “Paradoxically, the current pandemic and concurrent digital acceleration, demonstrate the need for spaces conceived for human beings to interact. In the typical office building, a visitor enters, and then disappears.. It is far from clear what happens inside. In the new Axel Springer building, people and their interaction, are the essence. The Springer building is a tool for the further development of a company in perpetual motion. It offers its users a physical base – a wide variety of spatial conditions, intimate to monumental – in contrast to the flatness of working in virtual space.”

The public can experience the building on three levels: on the ground floor you can stroll through the studios, the spaces for events and exhibitions, the canteens and restaurants; from the meeting bridge you can watch the daily running of the company and its evolution, while on the roof you can enjoy the view of the city while sipping a coffee.