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Vivico starts building TOUR TOTAL in Berlin
Berlin July 13, 2010. Vivico starts building TOUR TOTAL opposite Berlin’s central railway station. Work on the excavation starts today for the some 226 feet (69 metre) high office building.
In June 2009 the real estate company Vivico presented the project for the first office building in the new Europacity district to the public. Vivico then announced a multistage process involving workshops with architects, the Berlin Senate, neighbourhood representatives, TOTAL and Vivico to develop the architecture of the new building. About a year later Vivico began implementing the building project as investor and developer. The new building has been given the name TOUR TOTAL and is to be built at Europaplatz next to Berlin’s central railway station. 100 percent of the building has already been rented and it will serve as the German headquarters for TOTAL Deutschland GmbH.
The first phase of construction will be to create the excavation pit of about 1,341,957 ft³ (38,000 m³). Vivico and its subsidiary omniCon, a company that specialises in construction management, have commissioned the joint venture between the companies Grund- und Sonderbau GmbH and Hochtief Construction AG, to complete the first phase. The contract for the building shell will be awarded around October 2010. The building should be completed by the 3rd quarter of 2012.
TOUR TOTAL has been designed as a sustainable building. The aim is to achieve DGNB (German Sustainable Building Council ) silver certification. The DGNB standard will make the building’s energy consumption values far superior to the legal requirement. District heating and light-saving concepts will be used to reduce power consumption. The building has direct access to a variety of nearby public transport services for both local and long distance travel. Showers in the building and around 90 bicycle stands give additional comfort to those, arriving by bike.
TOUR TOTAL is the first new office building to be built in the Europacity district. The total area of the new district is 40 hectares, twice as large as Potsdamer Platz. The converted green boulevard at Heidestrasse will be flanked by office buildings. Residential buildings will be constructed away from the main roads, primarily in the area around the Berlin-Spandau shipping canal. An urban planning competition was carried out in spring 2008 for the development site. The results were included in a master plan, which was adopted by the Berlin Senate on May 5, 2009.
Large parks and green spaces, a promenade by the canal and a centrally located harbour basin will also guarantee a high standard of living. With the Kunst-Campus (Arts Campus), consisting of the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Art, the Rieckhalle with the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, the galleries in the Halle am Wasser (Hall by the Water), public exhibition spaces and many artists’ studios, the first project component has already been implemented.