Königstraße 1

Located at the intersection of Stuttgart's most important shopping street and the emerging Stuttgart 21 urban development, this project redefines what a city-center office and commercial building can be in the 21st century.

Urban Vision

Positioned between Königstraße 1 and the new main train station, the building anchors a newly created public square that serves as the gateway between Stuttgart's historic center and the future Rosenstein district. A dynamic media façade animates this square, offering art, culture, information, and interactive experiences to residents and visitors alike, presenting Stuttgart as a forward-looking city the moment people step out of the station.

Sustainability

The project sets an ambitious environmental agenda. By retaining 80% of the embodied energy from the existing basement structure and recycling floor materials, combined with photovoltaic systems and heat exchangers drawing on the Nesenbach stream, heating and cooling energy demand is reduced by over 90%. The goal is NET ZERO in both construction and operation. An integrated atrium maximizes natural daylighting, achieving a Useful Daylight Illuminance (UDI) value of 84% to a 33.6% improvement over the previous building, significantly reducing the need for artificial lighting, cooling, and shading year-round.

New Ways of Working

The office floors are designed around the realities of modern work: flexible, open coworking areas that can be subdivided into units of approximately 200 sqm, anchored by a central atrium with meeting zones, breakout spaces, and ad-hoc workstations. The façade module of 136.5 cm provides long-term adaptability. This is not an office where people have to be, it is one where they want to be.

Architecture and Façade

The building steps down from six stories to one on its southern side, responding sensitively to neighboring buildings and the hotel to the south while opening the deep floor plate to natural light. The punched window façade features approximately 40% operable windows in triple-glazed aluminum-timber construction with rear-ventilated cladding and integrated façade greening. Two circulation cores serve generous ground-floor lobbies at the upper end of Königstraße and the adjacent theater passage, with an open staircase connecting directly to the central atrium.

Media Façade

Facing the new station square, the media façade combines LED screens and solar panels within slim aluminum modules, creating a floating, semi-transparent screen with 40–60% transparency. It provides a dynamic interface between the building's interior life and the public realm, visible from a distance as a landmark, and experienced up close as an immersive lighting environment, while preserving the privacy and views of the office spaces behind it.

This project responds to three defining challenges of our time: the future of urban space, the imperative of sustainability, and the transformation of how we work, proposing a single building that meaningfully addresses all three.