KAISTRAßE

URBAN AGENCY, together with RKW Arkitektur, has been invited to design a new hotel at the southern entrance to Düsseldorf Media Harbor. The site at Kaistraße 1 is the last property of a development zone which has made both day and night activity a priority in the revitalization of the district. Towards that goal, this scheme proposes a mixed-use building that promotes maximum exchange between the interior and existing urban environment. The local plan specifies a maximum building volume, within which a series of volumes are stacked according to different criteria. The arrangement of the blocks serves to break down the scale of the building, and corresponds to the geometry of the surrounding urban context. Two high points establish the hotel as a new landmark in the neighborhood, while the lower volumes respond to the human scale of the adjacent buildings. The hotel blocks are made prominent as two slightly shifted towers, while the other functions, such as offices, make up the lower building mass. The different volumes are clad in variations of the same facade, as a graphic and pragmatic expression of the interior functions. The constellation of masses, each slightly unique, effectively transitions between the human and landmark scale of this building, and helps the hotel to blend seamlessly into the new urban context.

Size: 28.705 m²

Location: Düsseldorf, Germany

Client: GBI

Collaborators: Urban Agency, RKW Arkitektur +

Type: Open Competition

Status: Settled

Team: Henning Stüben, Heechan Park, Rosa Fuentes Fernandez, Borja Santurino, Jakub Śmiech