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Hamburg’s new, expensive landmark

date added: 20.11.2011

Mechanical engineering student from ETH Zurich Julia Moser is currently doing an industrial internship at Airbus in Hamburg – and experiencing first hand how the city is building a new, controversial and expensive landmark: the Elbphilharmonie.

Not even finished and already a popular tourist attraction: the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg (Photo: Julia Moser)

“Completion of the Elbphilharmonie put back a few more months: construction work not due to finish until April 2014” – a headline that greeted me on the large screen at the station last week as I waited for the underground.

I’ve been asked several times what the emblem of the vast city of Hamburg is – other than the port, of course. It has always been St. Michaelis’ Church. Now that the Elbphilharmonie – a 110-metre-high architectural masterpiece with three concert halls, a hotel and forty-five flats – has joined the city’s skyline, however, surely the twenty-seven-metre-high church has been elbowed out once and for all.

Expansion of Hamburg City

The Elbphilharmonie is just one part of probably the largest cultural building site in Europe: “HafenCity”. Launched in 1997, the project sandwiched between the Elbe River and the historical warehouse district is turning into a mixture of homes, culture, leisure, tourism and trade. There will even be a university in HafenCity one day. A new underground line providing better access for HafenCity is also under construction.

Covering an area of 157 hectares, HafenCity will increase the size of Hamburg’s city centre by about forty percent and is one of the most remarkable urban development programmes in the world at a waterside location. The development of the showcase project is due for completion in 2025. The choice of Hamburg as the “European Green Capital” is partly down to the targeted, sustainable development of HafenCity. Today, HafenCity already has a population of 1,700, is home to 270 companies and employs around 7,200 people.

Sydney Opera House’s little sister

The Elbphilharmonie, the “lighthouse” of HafenCity, is already visible for miles around: a glass, highly futuristic construction perched on top of an existing building – the Kaispeicher, built in the sixties. From one side, the concert hall looks more cubic; from the Elbe, however, it looks a bit like a ship, bidding Hamburg’s visitors welcome.

Originally, the Elbphilharmonie, which was designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre De Meuron, was supposed to be ready this year. But even if the people of Hamburg have to be patient for a little while longer, the Elbphilharmonie with a concert hall containing 2,150 seats as its centrepiece is already an attraction. Tours of the building sight are available for tourists and locals and have become so popular that they are usually booked out well in advance. Once it has been completed, the concert hall will be freely accessible for anyone who is interested: there will be a plaza at a height of thirty-seven metres, offering spectacular views over the harbour and city. Ultimately, the Elbphilharmonie should one day shape the image of Hamburg all over the world. It’s clearly more than just a concert hall – just as the Sydney Opera House is more than a mere opera house.

Controversial masterpiece

The “glass wave”, which looks as if it is floating on the Kaispeicher, is also fascinating from a technical point of view: the colours of the roughly 1,100 and almost 1.2-ton windowpane elements shimmer a greenish blue, adding a maritime touch to Hamburg’s skyline; the form of the windowpanes, which were bent into shape at 600 degree Celsius, echoes the usage of the area around the building; the hotel and foyer have gill-shaped hatches, while the panes with the horseshoe-shaped sections were installed on the balconies of the flats. All the windowpanes are imprinted with little reflective dots to prevent the building from heating up too much in direct sunlight. On the side overlooking the Elbe, a specially developed screen was incorporated to enable ship radar to locate the building. In order to achieve the optimum effect, the arrangement of the dots on the individual panes was calculated on the computer according to the respective installation position.

The architectural quality of the building has been well-received on the international stage. In Hamburg, however, the project is controversial, not least because of the cost to the city: the EUR 180 million originally budgeted have run to over 500 million. Critics describe the project as immature and excessive; as an international figurehead for society’s fat cats.

On the other hand, the Elbphilharmonie gives the city a fresh face and, already established as a new landmark in the construction phase, will not just be an attraction for international tourists in the short term. The new HafenCity quarter links the city centre to the Elbe and thus brings the harbour city and its inhabitants closer to the water.

It is really exciting to witness the progress on the giant building site and see how the city is developing and expressing its identity. Ultimately, this will keep the tourists coming. I’ll also be returning to Hamburg as a visitor in the next few years – if only because of the view the new landmark will offer.

Source: www.ethlife.ethz.ch

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