Building on a historic site.
Formed as part of the bulwark around Hamburg shortly before the Thirty Years’ War, the Ericusspitze – surrounded by water on three sides – was for centuries an element of the Port of Hamburg, only to lie derelict for years in more recent times. The task now was to prepare the site for the construction of two new buildings on a shared, two-storey plinth.
For the pile foundation, special challenges had to be overcome. On the one hand, it had to take into account the new anchors for the key wall remediation that was being carried out in parallel, which reached far under the planned building. On the other hand, many unknown relics of past eras were waiting underground for their rediscovery and consideration in the planning and construction.
The large building pit directly on the open water was produced extremely economically by the clever exploitation of local conditions, without any enclosing sheet pile box and without expensive dewatering.
The Ericusspitze today: the old bulwark on the water has become the plinth and foundation for an ambitious modern building construction. A derelict area with a historic past has become the north-eastern gateway to the new, lively HafenCity district. So that now the old Ericusspitze can again play an important role in urban development.
© BIN, BIN, BIN, BIN, BIN, BIN, Carl-Jürgen Bautsch
