Visit to Estrel Tower with Regine Leibinger

The Harvard Cub of Berlin is delighted to invite you to an exclusive guided tour through the new Estrel Tower on December 2 at 4.00 pm led by the building’s architect, Harvard alumna Professor Regine Leibinger. 

Following the 60-minute guided tour, we cordially invite you to join us for refreshments, a Q&A session and networking.

At a height of 176 m, the Estrel Tower in Berlin-Neukölln will become the highest non-technical building in the city. The hotel tower will comprise a range of different use. In addition to 525 guest rooms, suites, and long-stay apartments, there will be offices on eight floors. The design for the ensemble of buildings, consisting of the tower, an atrium, a wing for event spaces and a parking garage, is based on a competition in 2014 which Barkow Leibinger won. The ensemble’s urban location is characterized by the collision of architecture largely from Wilhelminian period (late nineteenth/early twentieth century) and an industrial periphery. The new construction references—despite the differences of building cubature—the existing Estrel Hotel. The polygonal formal vocabulary, which in the case of the Estrel Tower runs from the ground plan via the atrium’s steel roof structure to the course of the façade, finds a design answer to the existing building.

Barkow Leibinger is a German-American architectural practice founded in Berlin in 1993 by Frank Barkow and Regine Leibinger. With a team of around 60, the office works across a range of projects including public buildings, office spaces, and interior renovations in both new and existing contexts. Their work is deeply informed by ongoing engagement in academic teaching and research, particularly in the areas of digital fabrication, material innovation, and spatial experimentation. Both Regine Leibinger and Frank Barkow studied architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and later returned to Harvard as visiting professors.