New Frankfurt Scraper Due For Autumn Start

The recession in the building industry in Frankfurt, Germany, could finally be coming to an end with the impending construction of a new 170 metre tall office tower, Opernturm.Originally planned in 2001 by the Zurich Insurance Company as their new headquarters standing near to the city opera house, the developer pulled out of the project following the current problems that the German economy has been wrestling with from reunification. Tishman Speyer took over the baton in 2003 originally anticipating construction in 2004 but this has since been delayed thanks to the lack of an anchor tenant. However, recently UBS have entered the scene and wish to take about 30,000 square metres of space in the 75,000 sq m project leading to a construction start in September 2006 and occupancy of the tower from the first of January 2010. The project has been designed by German firm, Christoph Mäckler Architekten. It was originally planned to be clad largely in sandstone as to match the Opera House that it will practically share a public square with. Newer designs have seen this watered down substantially with a reduction in expensive stone and increasing amounts of glass, perhaps to save costs and make the project more feasible. Lower costs to the developer have the add advantage of meaning they can charge lower rents and attract tenants more easily, a useful spin-off in a harder economic climate.The lower rise podium that the tower will stand on has been massed to fit in with the surroundings at street level, complete with a post modern neo classical frontage, a rare nod to history in a city that had most of the past bombed out of it in World War 2.Despite these revisions the same monolithic rectangular shape as before remains as does the height. The modern and slightly bland plans may be criticised by some as a building that would belong in sixties New York rather than Frankfurt which is spoilt rotten with futuristic designs but it does have the advantage that it will probably not date as much as the white hot architecture fashions of today.Opernturn will be the tallest building built in Frankfurt since 1999 and the first skyscraper to start construction since Skyper was completed in 2004 in what remains the skyscraper capital of Western Europe. Even with the construction of this new tower, set to be the 11th on the skyline, it's a title it will be losing probably sometime in 2007 to London showing just how much construction levels have declined since the heady days of the 1990s when the five tallest in the city were all built. Still, it shows there is still hope in what has gone from the most lively to depressed of all Europe's major office markets in the space of a less than a decade.