The Alexander Tower is due to be completed in 2023: at a height of 150 meters (35 floors), it will become the tallest building in Berlin (the current record holders have stopped at 125 m). There will be 337 apartments: the tower will be the first residential high-rise building in the center of the capital. Offices are planned on a total area of 42,000 m2 (including four underground levels); the basement floors will house a cinema, swimming pool and fitness center, shops, parking, etc. The building will appear next to the Alexa shopping center.
The architects of Ortner & Ortner Baukunst relied in their project on the tradition of "classical" modernism, expressed in the appearance of Alexanderplatz during the interwar period. The "Russian" origin of the developer company prompted the authors of the project to make it a "meeting point" for the two avant-garde trends of that era, German rationalism and Soviet constructivism.
The idea of building new skyscrapers at Alexanderplatz dates back to
the project of Hans Kollhoff, which won the idea competition in 1993: he proposed to place ten 150-meter skyscrapers there. Their stylobates were supposed to repeat the outlines of Peter Behrens' two buildings, Berolina House and Alexander House, and generally refer to the legacy of the 1930s, while Kollhoff proposed to demolish the buildings of the GDR era. The plan was corrected many times, but the topic of high-rise buildings has been preserved and in recent years has become closer to implementation.
Ortner & Ortner Baukunst presented their project in 2014. In the same year, Frank Gehry (American developer Hines) won the competition for another skyscraper on Alexanderplatz, but its implementation is still delayed, as the building may pose a problem for the tunnel of the metro line under construction. The third tower is a 2018 winning design by Sauerbruch Hutton (French developer Covivio), which is scheduled to be completed in 2023 or 2025.
