Since 1997 the Commerzbank Tower has dominated the Frankfurt skyline. The skyscraper was built as Europe’s highest office building. The tower measures almost 300 meters at the tip of the antenna.
Seen close up, the building impresses with its elegance and extremely successful façade. In terms of construction, the Star architect, Sir Norman Foster trod a new path. The central supply conductors usually seen in high-rise buildings were placed in the corner zones of the three-sided building in the ground plan, whereby the design goal of a light-flooded atrium could be realised.
The office tower has further outstanding features: at the foot of the building are the low-rise structures, consisting of an event building, a car park, shops and several apartments as well as a glass-covered plaza, which houses a canteen of the Commerzbank, but is open to the public. Nine windowed house gardens (each 15 meters high) are arranged in a spiral offset around the building, each with 3 units per facade side. A unique frame construction made of steel allows the 34 meter wide gardens to span without any support. The main load of the 180,000-ton construction is supported by 111 x 1.8m thick anchors, which reach up to 48.5 meters in the deep rocks of Frankfurt.
The Commerzbank Tower is the headquarters building of Commerbank AG. Critics, however, see an imbalance between the surrounding area and the large building mass for the chosen location in Frankfurt’s banking district.
There are several other office buildings in Frankfurt that are used by Commerzbank. These include the Gallileo high-rise, the Fürstenhof, the Kaiser Karree, the Commerzbank service center with Europe’s largest trading floor, the Neue Börse campus and the Commerzbank Digital Campus.
