RKM 740 Tower Düsseldorf

J. Mayer H. und Partner Architekten

Products

34 1144
Window handle

The FSB 1144 door handle is just as pleas­ing to the eye as it is to the hand. Jasper Mor­ri­son de­signed this door handle to be in­stantly recog­nis­able as a tool meant for the hand. Your eyes relax and your hand takes over. Your thumb falls into place, your fore­fin­ger finds its hollow and your hand finds some­thing sub­stan­tial to grasp. This is pre­cisely what the ‘Four-Point Guide to Good Grip’ drawn up by FSB and Otl Aicher calls for.

34 1144
Window handle
34 1144
Window handle
38 3878
Doorstop

Cladding of clouds and waves

The pleated façade of the RKM 740 Tower trig­gers the most varied of as­so­ci­a­tions. The ar­chi­tects’ blue­print en­vis­aged it as sym­bol­is­ing the waves of the river Rhine flowing past. Cloud for­ma­tions re­flected in the water can like­wise be made out in the new RKM 740 Tower’s graphic ex­te­rior. But the metal curtain wall façade can also be said to re­sem­ble a zip en­com­pass­ing the build­ing round and round again. The tower gets its name from its lo­ca­tion at “Rhine kilo­me­tre” 740.

This system of dis­tance co­or­di­nates begins at 0 in the city of Con­stance, on the epony­mous lake from which the Rhine emerges, and follows the river north­wards to its estuary in Rot­ter­dam. A new res­i­den­tial and health-care dis­trict is taking shape in the Düssel­dorf borough of Heerdt, on former hos­pi­tal grounds running down to the Rhine, for which the RKM 740 Tower fulfils a highly visible “light­house” func­tion for miles around. This 19-storey struc­ture on the left bank of the Rhine affords views far out over the river and Düssel­dorf’s harbour slotted into a meander on the other side of the city.

The ar­chi­tec­ture reveals con­trast­ing qual­i­ties of trans­parency and closure in a dou­ble-skinned façade made of glass and metal re­spec­tively. Inner glazing allows plenty of light into the in­te­rior whilst fa­cil­i­tat­ing gen­er­ous views out. Gleam­ingly white bands of wavy dentate metal act as an in­ter­mit­tent outer skin round each floor. These cause the tower to shimmer slightly from a dis­tance, thus height­en­ing its un­mis­take­able pres­ence.

Architecture and Object

J. Mayer H. und Partner Ar­chitek­ten: v. l. n. r. Andre Santer, Jürgen Mayer H., Hans Schnei­der
Photo: © Tom Wagner

“Like the build­ing it en­closes, the dou­ble-skinned alu­minium curtain wall is notable for its im­pres­sive en­gi­neer­ing and the ju­di­cious im­ple­men­ta­tion of a range of ded­i­cated tech­ni­cal so­lu­tions such as a cus­tom-de­vel­oped corbel,” was the opinion of the jury that ho­n­oured the RKM 740 Tower with the German Metal Con­struc­tion Prize in 2021.

Zip, unzip – shut out, open up

“The per­fo­rated metal curtain wall was con­ceived as a means of cre­at­ing a gently dynamic in­ter­play of open and closed areas,” Andre Santer, partner in the J.​MAYER.H and part­ners prac­tice com­mis­sioned, ex­plains. The façade is able to respond to pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances in this way. It clams up pro­tec­tively to the north so as to keep out the din from the nearby mo­tor­way, but opens up dra­mat­i­cally at all other points of the compass whilst nev­er­the­less pro­vid­ing shade and pro­tec­tion from the wind. “Like a zip, the tran­si­tions between open and closed are fluid.”

The build­ing’s ex­tra­or­di­nary façade earned it the 2021 German Metal Con­struc­tion Prize in the Window, Façade, Con­ser­va­tory cat­e­gory. The jury made special mention of the so­lu­tions adopted for points of detail, some of which were thought up specif­i­cally for the build­ing. But the tower’s hybrid uses are like­wise ground-break­ing. Four­teen res­i­den­tial floors sit atop a six-storey base­ment given over to a wealth of joint general prac­ti­tioner surg­eries and those run by spe­cial­ist prac­ti­tion­ers and ther­a­pists.

The ar­chi­tects chose the FSB 1144 door handle by Jasper Mor­ri­son “with ref­er­ence to the build­ing’s rounded formal idiom” and also em­ployed the model as a window handle. Round­ing off the range of hard­ware se­lected is the FSB 1053 lever handle for es­cape-route doors, a model sport­ing cur­va­ture of a for­mally more re­strained nature. The ar­chi­tects opted for a Blasted Alu­minium Dark Bronze An­odised finish (FSB 0710) for their handles, which are thus of a ma­te­r­ial and colour that blend in per­fectly with the build­ing’s façade pro­files pow­der-coated in finely tex­tured RAL 8019 (grey­ish-brown).

Object Details

Photos: © Lars Gruber

Location

RKM 740 Tower

Pariser Str. 89,
40549 Düssel­dorf,
Deutsch­land

Anfahrt planen

BESbswy