Town hall of the future Berlin
The town hall of the future as a beacon of democracy is designed across all scales in dialogue with the city and with an open door for the general public.
The new town hall along Otto-Braun-Straße positions itself as a three-part special structure that acts as a beacon personifying democracy and free and open dialogue, engaging with Berlin across four distinct scales: XL, L, M, and S.
On the city-wide XL scale, the town hall serves as an identity-defining anchor for the emerging Haus der Statistik quarter and the district of Mitte, where its tower – crowned by a digital communications element – creates an urban counterpart to Alexanderplatz while fitting seamlessly into the East German Modernist (Ostmoderne) building ensemble along the Leipziger Straße axis.
At the quarter L scale, the building base opens up on the ground floor to form a flowing Town Hall Forum that integrates key surrounding spaces, including access from the south via the Active Rain Band, a tree-lined arcade along Otto-Braun-Straße, Mollplatz to the north, and a courtyard garden to the west, all centred around a flexible council chamber.
On the neighbourhood M scale, this setup interconnects north-south and east-west public axis directly into a continuous interior sequence – moving fluidly from entrance to foyer, assembly hall, skylit atrium, and back out – thereby eliminating spatial boundaries between citizens and administration. At the S scale, individual facades respond to their immediate contexts through recessed entry plazas, stepped courtyard edges, and a material transition from heavy recycled concrete at the base to light recycled aluminium at the top, all while incorporating green patios, adaptable floor plans, and health-focused “New Work” environments into the building’s core DNA.
Reinterpreting sustainability through its “Architectural Revision” ethos, the design treats the primary load-bearing structure as a 100-plus-year investment using a flexible grid and reusable materials, relying on passive measures like cross-ventilation, night cooling, and external shading rather than overly complex technical systems.
Extending this vision into the exterior, the surrounding open spaces form a blue-green sequence featuring a climate grove at Mollplatz, a gathering area at Rathausplatz, and an “Active Rain Band” with swales and water retentions, connecting public transit, the town hall, and the broader quarter. Structurally, the building utilizes a rational 7.50-meter grid and a prefabricated timber-concrete composite skeleton above the ground floor, relying on reversible mechanical connections that shorten construction time, reduce carbon footprint, and ensure full demountability in the future. Fire safety is efficiently managed within the high-rise tower via a single internal safety stairwell, firefighter elevator, and full sprinkler coverage, while a secondary core and roof smoke extraction allow the open Town Hall Forum to maintain its spatial flexibility safely. Designed as an “Urban Mine,” the project prioritizes low life-cycle operating costs, non-toxic ecological materials, and simple maintenance. Finally, building services follow a low-tech, high-efficiency approach with low operating temperatures, bivalent energy supply, rooftop photovoltaics for self-consumption, and heat recovery to ensure long-term operational sustainability.
