TRION opening finally completes the octagon on Berlin's Leipziger Platz

Berlin's famous Leipziger Platz is about to be one brand new office building the richer with the opening of the TRION building this summer. The building, at the north-western end of the 'octagon', marks the completion of the famous ensemble of properties that make up the Leipziger Platz in the very heart of the city, after a gap of 70 years.

Oliver Weisigk, managing director of the developer AGIB Real Estate Germany, said, "The development of the last vacant plot within this building complex now brings to an end a building history that began with the re-planning of the area directly after the fall of the Wall."

The TRION has ten storeys and an underground car park. Shops and restaurants will be located on the ground floor, while the upscale office spaces will be located on the floors above. A standard office floor in the lower part of the building has a size of about 1,100 sqm of rental space, some of which can be divided into up to three separate rental units starting at 360 sqm of rental space. Net rent in the office space is from €44.00 cold (without utilities).

The floors in the tower section each have 410-820 sqm of lettable space, while the total office rental space in the building from the 1st to the 9th floor is about 8,185 sqm. The areas on the ground floor for retail and gastronomy have a combined size of 830 sqm and can also be divided flexibly. 

AGIB's Weisigk described the construction of the building as technically and logistically 'highly challenging', particularly at the excavation and foundation-laying stage with its very difficult subsoil, which took over eight months. The site itself is directly bordered to the north by the Canadian Embassy building, to the west by Ebertstraße with the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station below, to the south by the S-Bahn station walkway and to the east by Leipziger Platz with its constant stream of pedestrians and the tunnel of the crossing U-Bahn line 2. 

Historical references show that the site of the Leipziger Platz was, from 1685, a place where the Huguenots were permitted to grow vegetables. From 1736 the octagonal site was home to livestock farms and victuallers. In 1900 the German department store group Wertheim opened its flagship store on the site, at the time the biggest department store in Europe. It was destroyed by three exploding bombs in March 1943, and subsequently became part of the razed border strip demarcating the Russian occupied zone after the war.

The building was designed by well-known Berlin architects léonwohlhage Architekten after an open competition held in 2016. Work began in November 2017 with the groundbreaking ceremony.

Professor Hilde Léon, managing director of léonwohlhage Architekten, described the design process. "The fact that the TRION is the keystone on Leipziger Platz had a decisive influence on our design concept right from the start. On the one hand, we wanted to strengthen the ensemble, which is strongly characterised in terms of design by uniform façade grids, so as not to push this new building into the foreground as an architectural soloist. The façade facing Leipziger Platz is particularly striking, radiating a clear elegance through its calm and tranquil character, while the appearance facing Ebertstraße extends homogenously over the tower into the attic storey of Leipziger Platz", he said. The building has been awarded LEED Platinum, Core and Shell Standard certifications.