Groundbreaking Starts On PWC Frankfurt HQ

Groundbreaking has begun on PriceWaterhouseCoopers new headquarters in Frankfurt which once completed will be one of the tallest buildings in the city.

Called Tower 185 after the height in metres it originally would have reached, the 55 floor building has been developed by Vivico specifically for PWC to occupy the majority of taking about 60,000 square metres of the 116,000 square metre total.

Work is being driven by the ever expanding business that the financial services sector is going through in Frankfurt thanks to this being the location of the headquarters of the European Central Bank, and as a result the most important financial centre in the Eurozone.

Architect Christoph Mäckler has dreamed up an unusual design with a stone clad block wrapped around a central partially exposed glass cylinder. From most angles it looks like a conservative corporate headquarters topped with the signage of the occupier and the top five floors of the glass cylinder rising above it as if they are a service shaft, but from the front the glazed curvature is clearly exposed creating an unusual look.

The construction schedule is such that work on the foundations will be finished in February 2009, a seven storey podium which will have a conference center in it will completed in the autumn of 2010 and the tower itself will be finished in the end of 2011.