The Docks | Frankfurt am Main, Germany | 2021

Architects: MEIXNER SCHLÜTER WENDT
Design Team: Stepahn Rosa, Ramon Di Nora, Christine Dörr; Ulrich Domnik, Cordula Fischer, Emanuel Gießen, Chang-Yeh Ho, Angelika Köstler, Felicitas Krätzner, Friederike Sartor, and Funda Urunguv
General Contractor: GP Con GmbH
Client: Groß & Partner Grundstücksentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH
Photographers: Christoph Kraneburg and Lars Gruber

Right on the waterfront in Frankfurt’s Osthafen district, new office building The Docks comes together with Dock 2.0, a slab -like existing structure, to create a homogenous ensemble. The area surrounding this new office building is dotted with industrial complexes and warehouse facilities, lending it the idiosyncratic atmosphere typical of a container port. What immediately springs to mind is associations with terms such as “storage”, “stacking”, “moving” and “shifting”. Along with the usage requirement for various “attachable” elements, these terms were the starting point for an edifice whose architectural shape and appearance fit in instinctively with the look and feel of the Osthafen. While the façade facing Lindleystrasse is divided up into three sections, creating the look of a stand-alone structure, the side giving onto the wet dock has been inspired by bright stacks of shipping containers.

Its many-hued façade integrates the building, viewable from so many different angles, into the port environment. High, inviting foyers along the street frontage greet employees and visitors alike as they enter the building. From here access to the building takes the form of generous combi-zones or central, excess-width corridors. State-of-the-art office premises suffused with light thanks to generous windows, inviting and lavishly greened sun decks, loggias giving onto the wet dock and large roof terraces with views of the port, the ECB and the skyline are the most salient features of these offices in their exceptional waterfront location.