Renzo Piano

Once the competition for Potsdamer Platz had been decided and Hilmer & Sattler's solution had been ratified, the investing companies called for tenders for the development of their respective areas based on the solution presented by the winners. The Daimler Benz area, which was the subject of the competition held on September 4, 1992, is the area to the southwest of the site, next to Hans Scharoun's Staatsbibliothek and the Landwehrkanal. The starting conditions were not easy: on the one hand, it was a question of resolving the encounter with Scharoun's building and responding to the master's gesture of interrupting the old Potsdamerstrasse, the southern road of the trident of Potsdamer Platz; the other problem was the excessive height of Hilmer & Sattler's rigid blocks.

Renzo Piano's first prize-winning project responds to the first of these challenges by proposing a building that mimics Scharoun's, and by crowning the old Potsdamerstrasse with a sort of fragmented little square that bridges a widening of the canal. With respect to the Hilmer & Sattler blocks, Piano proposes a setback of the top floors and places the tower required by the investment company next to the canal...[+]