The Empire Riverside Hotel was built on the banks of the Elbe, on the border of the city center and the St. Pauli district, built up with low-rise residential buildings of the 19th century.
The proximity to the river made the new building a prominent feature of the city's panorama. To harmonize the building with the church spiers and tenement houses that form the urban landscape of the early 20th century, Chipperfield turned it face down to the water so that its profile would not destroy the prevailing appearance of this part of Hamburg.
From a compositional point of view, Empire Riverside consists of three rectangular volumes: a 21-storey hotel tower, its 6-storey L-shaped base and a 4-storey Brauhaus shopping and office center (named after the brewery that used to be at the hotel site). The cornice of each of these parts corresponds to the height of one of the buildings surrounding the new complex. The dark glass facades of the building are decorated with a rectangular "lattice" of bronze profiles. When their metal becomes patina over time, the building will achieve a unity of color with the historical buildings of Hamburg - brick houses with copper roofs.
