It began in 2008 with an idea in a shared flat in Berlin and ended – for now – with a 100,000 m² company site in Friedrichshain, not far from the East Side Gallery and next to the Mercedes-Benz Arena. It's an almost unbelievable success story: we're talking about Zalando, the former start-up company that aims to become the largest fashion retailer in the country.

6,000 Zalando employees in Berlin were scattered across the city and are now being brought together on the Zalando campus. Half of them will be based in the new headquarters, which the company gave itself as a gift to mark its 10th anniversary. The invited competition was launched in 2015 and was won by the Berlin-based architectural firm Henn. The architects say that the idea for this building was inspired by the charm of old industrial buildings. The building was completed in 2019 – and it is unlike anything ever seen before: the basic shape consists of a double X, with a vertical atrium opening up in the middle across the entire height of the building. The corners and angles created by this unusual shape on the outside are courtyards and semi-public areas that have been moved outwards. Henn for the architecture and Kinzo for the interior design have come up with something unusual in every respect. The building is intended to represent the diversity and colourfulness of the capital. The entire building is enveloped by a glass façade that is partly transparent and partly translucent.

The central section represents the heart of the building. From the entrance, you first enter a huge atrium, which is illuminated by daylight streaming through the diamond-shaped windows in the roof. A long, gently sloping staircase leads up to the first level of the seven-storey building. Here, the surrounding levels begin to intersect and cross with the airspace. They form bulges, creating a variety of spatial variations and forming a transition to the legs of the X.

With its interior design, the Kinzo office has invented many imaginative, colourful and multifaceted variations of work corners and workplaces. They call it a kind of refined shell construction – just as colourful and creative, heterogeneous and international as the various neighbourhoods of Berlin.

www.henn.com
www.kinzo-berlin.de

Photography Credits:

HG Esch
www.hgesch.de

(Published in CUBE Berlin 03|22)