Jakob-Kaiser-Haus

The Jakob-Kaiser-Haus is the largest complex of government offices built in connection with the transfer of the German federal government from Bonn to Berlin. It houses the staff of the governing coalition members and comprises over 2,000 office rooms, two large committee halls, many conference rooms, extensive cafeteria facilities and a fully-equipped TV studio. The complex was designed and built by a consortium of four architecture firms. The section designed by de Architekten Cie. forms roughly a quarter of the whole complex. It is situated in a prominent location between the Reichtsag and the Brandenburger Tor.
The building encloses two courtyards, one of which has been covered with a glass roof. The resulting space serves as an entrance hall for the southern part of the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus. The wooden panelling gives the entrance hall the character of an interior room; the adjacent courtyard exudes, by contrast, a sense of external space. The two courtyards remain in visual contact with each other by a two-storey tall opening at ground level, interrupting the strictly orthogonal main structure of the master plan. The street façades reflect the theme of the interior court in two different ways. The Ebertstrasse façade, providing a view of the Tiergartenpark, presents a lively clair obscur by way of the three-dimensional effect of the natural stone framework with its recessed terracotta panels. Attached to the Dorotheenstrasse façade is an additional glass “shell” which marks the entrance and places an accent in the street with its primarily stony façades. Seen from the working spaces the glass shell creates a visual wintergarden, increasing in this narrow street the users` privacy. The previously existing building, the Kammer der Technik built between 1912 and 1914, has been entirely integrated into the new structure. From a functional viewpoint, its office spaces fit in seamlessly with the new building.