Mercator One Office Building | Hadi Teherani Architects

A ‘trailblazing’ building and a representational entryway to the city are arising with the new construction of Mercator One Office Building in Duisburg, Germany. The distinctive retreating fan-shaped façade that pivots at the short ends guides the streams of travelers and commuters from the flanking central railway station together with pedestrian flows from the inner city. At the same time, its out-of-the-ordinary silhouette that spawns new and surprising sightlines, again and again, turns the roughly 100-meter-long, 17-meter-wide, and 26-meter-high structure into a landmark for the surrounding urban quarter.

Despite its impressive look, the building has a restrained character due to the anthracite-colored façade covering. The large glass surfaces contribute to the openness and lightness of the space. By moving the stairwells into the building’s core, the clear-cut, calm segmentation of the façade utilizing a rectangular grid is preserved.

Mercator One Office Building’s Design Concept

On an area of 9,500 square meters, Mercator One has offices and a restaurant. The building structure allows for variable floor-plan design, as well as a high adaptability for various sorts of office designs. Various city views are maximized for user comfort, from the building’s lateral staggering and the fan-like twist at the building’s short extremities. The offices on the sixth story also have access to a large rooftop deck.

One thousand two hundred square meters on the bottom level with a high story height are set aside for culinary and retail usage. Restaurants and cafés may now sit on the newly constructed Portsmouthplatz plaza, energizing the public-access space as the critical focal point connecting the train station to ‘downtown’ Duisburg. On the underground level, the structure is being supplemented with a 2-story underground car park with about 130 parking places and areas for building service engineering and storage.

The whole façade comprises up to 90% recycled aluminum (Hydro CIRCAL from Wicona) acquired from demolition projects, autos, and food packaging. It is a pioneering flagship project in the German market in this regard. Triple-insulated solar control glass was placed for thermal and noise insulation, as well as sunscreen. Modern ceiling systems with integrated lighting deliver heating, air conditioning, fresh air, and enhanced acoustics to the building at a heat recovery rate of more than 80%.

The underground parking garage will have 50 bicycle stands and 22 charge stations for electric vehicles, with the ability to extend them. The engineering roof area is being extensively greened, and the rooftop terrace on the 6th floor receives huge sections of intense landscaping to counteract the urban ‘island heat effect’ with more vegetation. The exterior façade lighting (white lines of light) emphasizes the fanning at the building’s short ends and changes color to accompany the activities in the city. (For example, red for the Christmas market, blue and white for an MSV football match, etc.)

The design of the publicly accessible interiors, such as the entrance lobbies, lift hallways, and stairwells, adheres to the Ruhr region’s ‘rough and tough’ credo but without sacrificing elegance by employing pure, straightforward materials such as concrete, steel, and glass, stone, wood, and paint.

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