Frankfurt. The Berlin architect Robert Gabriel made the proposal at the “Kongreß über Stahlverwendung” (lit. “Congress on Steel Use”). In document no. 34, which was available to the participants of the future congress as a written contribution to the discussion, Gabriel described his vision of the future of modern urban planning: the 25,000 soul city in a single tower.

As visionary as this proposal initially appeared, it is technically feasible, even if the dimensions of the Gabriel skyscraper initially appeared utopian even to technicians. The building is to be 1250 meters (4100 feet) high, have 8000 apartments of 100 square meters each, 700,000 square meters of cultural and commercial space, 356 floors above ground and 16 below ground. The tower with a diameter of 64 meters (210 feet) will sit on a lower rotunda with a diameter of 204 meters (670 feet) and a height of 80 meters (262 feet), while the 20-meter-high (66 feet) foundation plate will have a diameter of 300 meters (984 feet). Architect Gabriel puts the cost of this Turmstadt (lit. “tower city”) at around 2.5 billion DM.

Gabriel chose the Michelbach community in Nassau (Taunus) as the location for the city of the future. With the implementation of the project, the 2,500-count village on Bundesstrasse 54 between Wiesbaden and Limburg will suddenly grow to eleven times the number of inhabitants. If the weather is clear, the tower can still be seen from Aschaffenburg. At night the lighted windows of the house on the lower Main river would still appear like a new star on the western horizon. The size and capacity of the building is perhaps best illustrated by the following comparison: the district town of Lohr am Main with its almost 12,000 inhabitants would have space twice in his tower city.