Large-scale project with highest fire safety requirements

With four high-rise buildings in the heart of Frankfurt city centre, Dutch architect Ben Van Berkel and his team at UNS have created a multifunctional building complex and intend to revitalise Frankfurt's increasingly isolated banking district as an urban location. Van Berkel himself describes this commission as a gift. “As an architect, you don't often get the opportunity to develop a design for a location with so much untapped potential.” On the site, 16,141 m² have been divided into four real estate sections, creating a “city within a city” with 213,000 m² of gross floor area. The four towers, which stretch up to 233 metres high, are connected at their base and offer space for almost 600 apartments, prestigious office floors, a lifestyle hotel, a long-stay hotel, a day-care centre and an urban mix of retail outlets.

In general, fire protection is of enormous importance in large-scale projects, but this is especially important with architecture that includes so much openness. The focus here is that fire protection compartments should be divided in a way that is as inconspicuous and barrier-free as possible. Due to the diverse requirements and changes of use that are frequently expected, “FOUR Frankfurt” also requires highly flexible, multifunctional solutions. The architects that make up the planning entity of UNS+HPP, hhpberlin – Ingenieure für Brandschutz GmbH, Berlin, together with the client Groß & Partner Grundstücksentwicklungsgesellschaft mbH, Frankfurt am Main, decided to work closely with Schüco to tackle the issue of fire protection.