MyZeil Shopping Mall, Frankfurt, Germany
MyZeil is a shopping mall in the center of Frankfurt, Germany. It was designed by Roman architect Massimiliano Fuksas. It is part of the PalaisQuartier development, with its main entrance on the Zeil, Frankfurt's main shopping street. It was officially opened on 26 February 2009 by the city mayor Petra Roth. This glass and steel edifice and sculptural spirals that look like a hyper-modern gallery space or a building from a science-fiction film is, in fact, the MyZeil Shopping Mall, the work of celebrated architect Massimiliano Fuksas in Frankfurt, Germany. Its spectacular steel and glass façade, particularly the vortex, is the conspicuous feature that draws in potential shoppers and sets it apart as iconic.
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Studio Fuksas, led by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, is one of the most outstanding international architectural firm in the world. Over the past 40 years the company has developed an innovative approach through a strikingly wide variety of projects, ranging from urban Interventions to airports, from museums to cultural centers and spaces for music, from convention centers to offices, from interiors to design collections. With headquarters in Rome, Paris and Shenzhen, and a staff of 170 professionals, the practice has completed more than 600 projects and has worked in Europe, Africa, America, Asia and Australia, receiving numerous international awards.
Project name: MyZeil – das Shopping-Center, Frankfurt Awarding authority: PalaisQuartier GmbH & Co. KG through MAB Development GmbH Architects: Massimiliano Fuksas Architetto, Rome/Italy Urbanistic: KSP Engel und Zimmermann Architekten, development planning: Frankfurt am Main Structural framework: Krebs und Kiefer Beratende Ingenieure für das Bauwesen GmbH, Darmstadt Weischede Herrmann und Partner GmbH, Stuttgart Façade planning: IFFT Institut für Fassadentechnik FFM LOCATION Karlotto Schott, Frankfurt am Main Special constructions Roof and facade: Knippers Helbig advanced engineering, Stuttgart Inner decoration facade: MOEDING Keramikfassaden GmbH, Marklkofen Massimiliano Fuksas of Lithuanian descent, was born in Rome Electrical engineering: Dörflinger und Partner, Ingenieurbüro VBI, Hamburg in 1944. He graduated in Architecture from the University of Fire protection: hhpberlin, Ingenieurgesellschaft für Brandschutz mbH Rome “La Sapienza” in 1969. Since the Eighties he has been one Conveyor technique: Lüsebrink Ingenieure VBI, Hamburg of the main protagonists of the contemporary architectural Heating / ventilation / PB Peter Berchtold scene. sanitary: Ingenieurbüro für Energie und Haustechnik, Sarnen/Switzerland Building physics: VRP Bauphysik Ingenieurbüro von Rekowski und Partner, Weinheim Plot size: 10.109 m2 Rentable surface: 51.750,54 m2 Floor area: overground 61.204,60 m3 underground 15.663,19 m3 Gross room volume: overground 343.658,21 m3 underground 66.720,94 m3 Completion: February 2009
The sculptural glass facade creates impressive and dynamic spaces within the public atriums, creating a unique environment for a common activity. The 77,000 square meter structure includes shops, leisure spaces, kids areas, restaurants, fitness center and parking.
The design is inspired by geography and topography. The facade is conceived as a river that has different depths reaching into the Earth. The structure is inspired by the historical context of the site. The fluid shape comes from the connection of the Zeil, the shopping boulevard in the heart of Frankfurt, and the Thurn and Taxis palace. The two facades on opposite ends of the building are designed to evoke the two distinct senses of the city. The modern city on the facade running along the Zeil expresses leisure, entertainment and relaxation. The historic-facing facade maintains a formal appearance.
On the side of the Zeil the building has an internalizing quality. The facade challenges t he exterior-interior distinction with a void that is pulled into the atrium of the mall, looking very much like a vortex. The facade is designed with alternating panels of the glass and steel. Mostly transparent, it floods all levels of the mall with natural sunlight. The shopping mall is spread over six floors and includes a square and meeting place that also has a fitness area and restaurants. It is an interior public plaza that is absorbed into the program of the building. The Zeil in Frankfurt am Main has been one of Germany’s best known shopping streets for more than 100 years. The MyZeil Mall comes in as well suited addition to the richly esteemed shopping district. The value it has added to its immediate context is befitting and redefines what exactly a shopping district entails.
Massimiliano Fuksas & Doriana Fuksas
The Zeil in Frankfurt am Main has been one of Germany’s best known shopping streets for more than 100 years. The MyZeil Mall comes in as well suited addition to the richly esteemed shopping district. The value it has added to its immediate context is befitting and redefines what exactly a shopping district entails. It is a strong example of how shopping centres are being reshaped, not just in Germany but around the world. ‘The mall isn’t a space which is apart from culture and the city any more. It’s at the heart of the modern urban consumer and cultural experience,’ says Lucy Knockton, founder of Concierge de Mode, a boutique travel concierge and fashion service that works throughout Germany and in other countries in Europe. Secondly, MyZeil mall boasts of the longest internal, self-supporting escalator in Germany. Truthfully speaking, judging by the dexterity of the Germans, if its the longest internal selfsupporting escalator in Germany, its definitely the longest in the world Reflexions in red Massimiliano Fuksas’ idea takes this as a starting point in order to create a central eye catcher of almost dazzling colours, whilst the whole mall colour reservation dominates so as not to let the architecture be in competition with the mostly colourful window displays. The levels from ground floor to 4th and 2nd floor respectively are accessible from two areas via shifted escalators. The express escalators connecting the ground floor directly and without a pedestal with the 4th floor are situated in the main entrance area and create an additional particular tension in relation with the action landscape on this level. The piazza with its gastronomy utilisation and its access points to the functional areas - fitness, wellness and kids’ world – above is outshined by a slightly vaulted, shiny red glazed ceramic façade carried away by its borders towards the spatial depth, demonstrates its horizontality thanks to the 202x600 mm tiles’ groove structure especially developed by the manufacturer MOEDING Keramikfassaden GmbH, Marklkofen (Germany). The horizontality is furthermore underlined by red neon lines freely arranged all over the ceramic surface. The Eastern volume, covered up with fire polished stainless steel, diffusely reflects the red concentrated on this level in the room. The moving play of reflections of slightly distorted structures, of shadow and light, superposed by the shiny red ceramic surface and its light lines, can be seen by different points of view, as for example from the entrance area on the ground floor, and plays the role of a background and destination point of the express escalators. These colour reflexions, downright virtuosic and dispersing in all directions, underline the atmosphere quietly from the background, without hiding or outweighing the architectonic pretension of reservation in colour.
Now, to explain the three most distinct marvels unique to the mall, first starting with its envelope. Massimiliano Fuksas designed a glass structure that is curved and partially rotated along its axis, extending in all directions from the 13,000 square metre roof. He says that this design was inspired by a canyon. The glass-metal elements run through the entire building like a river bed, thereby flooding it with daylight. One would wonder where the rock formations of a canyon come in if the building is the river bed, but if the architect says so, then it is so! In his defense, I think the fluid shape of the mall does bring out the river bed concept with indefinite depth and even a swale represented by the trumpet-like void.
The third and most unique feature on this building is the fact that it looks like it has a vortex in its glass facade. It is incorporated into the design in such an interesting manner. The fully glazed main facade continues the organically formed steel-glass roof and allows the pedestrians a view through the building into the sky by an inward trumpet formed deformation, the perceived vortex. It starts from the elevation of the facade, goes through the main hall and forms itself finally in the ground floor as a well-lit tunnel. The void appeares to pulled into the atrium of the mall as though being sucked by a futuristic space creature. The glass curves appear to create a vortex, a somewhat witty play on the idea of a mall as an empty, soulless and superficial space with all the things that are fashioned to keep your wallet empty.
PROPOSED SHOPPING MALL @ DAVANAGERE