Outline Concept
“Our proposal leaves the monumental industrial spatial quality of the existing Grossmarkthalle intact while exploiting its volume to great use for ECB lobby and public functions. Since these programs are restricted to the lower levels, a large volume of space is kept open. Here we envisage a planted indoor park consisting of fruit trees from all over Europe. This reference to both the diversity of Europe and the history of the Grossmarkthalle can also be enlisted to contribute to a sustainable environment.

The core ECB activities are housed on the riverfront in a new office tower typology that is both centrally and vertically organized. The landmark design is instantly recognizable as a collective unified space due to its spherical massing, It symbolizes communication and exchange with both the open multi-story atrium gardens on its perimeter and its voided center across which there is unprecedented literal and visual communication between office plates. The sphere, with a diameter of 120m and a height of 100m, has 30 office layers. The spherical massing makes the building omni-directional as it is composed of vertically stacked floors that pinwheel around vertical cores making discrete internal atria and public courtyard spaces in the sky. As a result of the concave outline of the building and the framing of these internal voids, each floor plan is different. Yet, because of the symmetry of the system, there is a high degree of repetition in elements, providing a strong structural logic and functional feasibility for the building,

The design expresses the ECB values of transparency, integrity, excellence, solidity and efficiency. The sphere, placed in the southeast corner of the site, presents a bright, translucent image of wholism and communication. A future oriented nerve center organized around a central core of open transparent exchange. The sphere expresses integrity and completion. The central void expresses openness and a public gesture of embrace and enclosure. The vertical building complex organized as a sphere provides possibilities for combination, unification, solidity and integrity while remaining clear, iconic and open.

On the European stage, the sphere provides a unified, yet changeable, subtle and flexible representation of a strong whole, made out of different components.”