The current
building boom going on in Berlin has garnered controversy inside and
outside the city, as an international roster of architects put up
signature structures all over town. From Norman Foster's
reinvigorated Reichstag to Daniel Libeskind's stunningly brutal
Jewish Museum, Berlin has not seen as wholesale a renaissance in its
built environment since the decades leading up to World War II.
Now comes Frank Gehry's entry: the $200 million DG Bank building,
which is next to the Brandenberg Gate. Because of a set of
city-imposed constraints governing development around the portal
that once separated East Berlin from West, Gehry had to work within
a stricter format than he is used to. "People are surprised that I
can do so detailed a rectilinear structure," he says of the
building's off-white limestone wrapper. Within that highly rational
exterior, however, is an enormous atrium filled with one of Gehry's
most exuberant forms to date: an undulating metal horse's head that
contains a two-tiered conference center.
The new main Berlin branch of Frankfurt-based DG Bank is as
symbolic to the institution that commissioned it as the Brandenberg
Gate is to Berliners, explains Detlef Marquardt, DG Bank's executive
vice president. "Berlin is becoming one of Europe's most significant
centers of culture, business, and innovation, and this building is
indicative of the bank's willingness to embrace these new
realities."
"What's different about the building is that it looks so
improbable," adds Gehry. "You would never know from the outside that
there's this huge sculptural form inside." The atrium's interior is
clad with warm-toned wood and crowned with a canopy of glass tiles
set into a stainless-steel grid -- a triumvirate of materials that
are as sculptural as they are structural. "People know that they
need good art and good music, but they don't necessarily know that
they need good buildings," Gehry says. "It takes an enlightened
client to build something like this. And those are pretty rare."