Hanover is the capital of Lower Saxony. It is difficult to fall in love with this city at first sight, but it is even more difficult not to love it with all your heart, eventually getting to know better. As a rule, people come here not out of tourist curiosity, but for work. The city exhibition complex is the largest in the world, and every year the famous and also the world's largest industrial exhibition Hannover Messe and the CeBIT IT technology review are held there. The next World Exhibition-Expo took place in the same complex in 2000.
After the city was severely destroyed during the Second World War, most of it was restored, making copies of the historical buildings. Hanover, like most cities in the German province, does not have an exquisite collection of modern architecture, but it does have some interesting "exhibits". One of them can rightfully be called the office building of the city transportation service, designed by Frank Gehry and therefore named Gehry-Tower.
Let's start with the fact that the transport service is a completely state-owned enterprise, and it is courageous to order a project from such an eminent architect (almost a magician who turns, thanks to his non-trivial architecture, cities in decline into magnets for tourists) and, what is even more curious, almost always goes beyond budget limits - behavior that is not typical of the German mentality (although Gehry still has other buildings in Germany - for a variety of customers).
The construction site is generally a complete surprise, because the building is located in the very heart of the colorful, international, very “motley” in terms of architecture, the “red light district” quarter. In addition to brothels legalized in Germany, here you can find grocery stores and other goods from India, Turkey, Thailand, Poland, many cafes with ethnic cuisine, and so on. In the center of this non-German, loud, active place, stands the detached nine-story Gehry building, whose matte panels reflect the seething life around.
The construction was completed in 2001. When designing, new technologies were used at that time: in Gehry's office, a 1: 100 model was first created, which was then scanned and imported into CAD in order to accurately calculate the dimensions of individual parts, each of which is individual in shape and dimensions. The final shape of the building was achieved by tilting and rotating the volume relative to the vertical axis - so that the extension of the console was 2.5 meters. This solution allows you to maximize the potential of the small plot of land where the Gehry Tower stands. In addition, it allows her to look advantageous from all angles.
At first glance, you may not notice this, but the building consists of two volumes. In addition to the 9-storey tower, the surface of which is lined with silver stainless steel panels, there is an adjoining 5-storey volume on the site, covered with the same steel panels, but already in dark blue. According to the architects, the second volume was intended to smooth out the difference in height between the tower and the surrounding buildings.
It is worth saying a few words about the panels that the tower is faced with. It is not immediately striking, but on the surface of each of them, by special order, sweeping scratches were applied. What for? So that even after many years of "life" of the facade, no (other) damage was noticeable on it. This, as you can see, was a good idea, since the tower, which was commissioned more than 10 years ago, still looks completely untouched by time.
We must pay tribute to Gehry and the unexpected foresight of the city transport service: the project was not only brought to life within budget, but, indeed, uses all the possible "pluses" of the place: even the diversity of the context plays into the hands of the building, creating interesting reflections. And, although the "Gary Tower" and stands out strongly from the general row of buildings, it does so in a very elegant way.
There is an opinion that there are only two ways to work with the context: ignoring it, design anything - even an office in the form of a UFO, or quote the context - partially or completely. But Gehry, as I wrote above, is somewhat of a magician and, although many of his projects can be called controversial, it is simply impossible to pass them by without leaving them in memory. And so the tower of the transport service - dissolving in context, smoothing out the difference in heights, mimicking, leaving no chance for the committee for the protection of the historical heritage of complaints - remains something that you will definitely take away with you from your architectural journey through Hanover.
