The Mercedes-Benz Headquarters in Berlin are (till 2013) situated on the Potsdamer Platz, as you know now (cf. previous posts) one of the most important places of the German capital.
Designed by famous architect José Rafael Moneo in 1993, built in 1998, the building is covered by yellow sandstone panels. On the Potsdamer Strasse, the glass facade on the lowest floors allows the view of the internal atrium, which is as big as the building itself.
The lot gets thinner and thinner to the Kulturforum, to look like a very lean construction.
Rafael Moneo gave us a very intersting solution for ubran planning: use the internal free spaces of the whole surface of the lot and design a building that gives the impression to be very lean. The opposite of the enormous concrete blocks of some postwar period city peripheries (for example Aubervilliers, near Paris). It is very important for the people living in cities to have the possibility to get in confrontation with the surronding buildings: on a more human scale.
credit: Mercedes, Citysam, Igougo.
by Jean-Baptiste Hurstel
Architexts Association 
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