The Amery group, collaborating with the municipal authorities of Berlin through its Amery-Berlin subsidiary specialized in real estate development projects, invited Claude Parent to participate on several large-scale projects. At the time the group was undertaking an ambitious development strategy relying on five guiding principles: architectural “signatures,” in-depth environmental impact studies, the stated intention of creating multi-purpose buildings combining multiple functions (offices, housing and shops), and endowing their projects with a cultural dimension, doing this through the creation of spaces dedicated to cultural activities.” While Jean Nouvel, former member of the Parent office in the late 1960s, was building the new Galeries Lafayette store (Friedrichstrasse, 1991-1996) in reunified Germany’s new capital city, Parent was proposing several projects for office buildings: Grolmannstrasse (total surface area excluding walls: 4 940 m²), Linden Corso (total surface area excluding walls: 46 578 m²), Kantstrasse (total surface area excluding walls: 7 347 m²), Europa Center (total surface area excluding walls: 5 128 m²) and Alexanderplatz. The architect describes his different inspirations as follows: “Kantstrasse, a cylindrical building, in homage to Mendelssohn, alternating the presence and absence of decorative elements. Grolmannstrasse, a metallic mesh covering with square links. For the Europa Center, a shopping gallery studded with temples dedicated to Mercury, the god of commerce. […] As for the project to restructure the Alexanderplatz, […] I wanted to create a public square where there was nothing but a big void.” The city-block building Linden Corse is at the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden, the Champs-Elysées of the former East Berlin. Claude Parent’s project would have gone up on the site of the Bauer café, a focal point of Berlin society prior to WWI.
Audrey Jeanroy
