With its sculptural facade, cube berlin is a real eye-catcher. The prism-shaped glass surfaces reflect the surroundings and give the building a dynamic appearance that changes depending on the perspective, weather and time of day. Balconies invisible from the outside and viewpoints for the occupants are concealed by the fully glazed layered facade.

cube berlin is a smart commercial building built by office specialists CA Immo and designed by Copenhagen’s 3XN Architekten. The cube is 42.5 metres high with approximately 17,500 square metres of office space across ten stories; the office spaces can be extended flexibly, making them suitable for all innovative office layouts. Whether activity-based workstations, dynamic offices, cross-organisational communication or multi-tenant occupancy, cube berlin offers the right digital environment for all modern workplace trends, including in-house navigation, tracking people and objects, and access control via person recognition.

The smart building concept offers optimum support through intelligent technologies. What makes it so ground-breaking is the AI developed exclusively for cube berlin; the system's 'brain' connects all the technology used throughout the building and makes cube berlin truly 'smart'. Approximately 3,800 sensors and beacons were installed in the building to make this work. Constant system communication enables user behaviour to be analysed and interpreted continuously, allowing ongoing optimisation of building operations. The auto-adaptive system recognises necessary improvements and makes suggestions as to how rooms can be used more efficiently, for example.

Tenants can operate the system independently using an app developed exclusively for cube berlin by Thing-it. They can use the app to control the room climate, access rights and services. The app also monitors the allocation of parking spaces in the underground car park and rooms for desk sharing. The building’s brain recognises employees via a Bluetooth interface on their smartphones and can configure individual room climate settings for every workstation.

Smart sun shading systems

The fully glazed, ventilated double skin facade with a reflecting outer skin is key in ensuring that the offices are used as effectively as possible. The facade guarantees optimum daylight utilisation while also enabling natural office ventilation and protecting against solar gain. To prevent the spaces between the glass elements from heating up in the summer, intelligently controlled Warema E 80 AF external venetian blinds with BAline control have been installed that communicate with the occupants. While a room is unoccupied, the sun shading system automatically responds to the information from the measuring instruments. As soon as someone enters, the blinds will only be lowered/the slats will only be adjusted once the user has given their approval. The people in the room receive messages via an in-house app and the sun shading system will not react until the user has confirmed. "These intelligent control options show cube berlin's users just how useful sun shading systems can be", says Reimund Jessberger from Warema's Smart Building Solutions sales team.

Construction details

Property: cube berlin

Location: Washington Platz, Berlin

Use: office building

Available surface: 17,500 m²

Architects: 3XN, Copenhagen/Stockholm/New York/Sydney

Architects (souterrain): Maedebach & Redeleit Architekten, Berlin

Structural engineers: Remmel + Sattler Ingenieurgesellschaft, Frankfurt/Berlin

Facade engineering: DS-Plan, Stuttgart; TAW Weisse, Hamburg

Smart building: CA Immo, Vienna; Thing-it, Bad Homburg; Drees & Sommer, Stuttgart

Fire safety: hhpberlin, Berlin

Building technology: DS-Plan, Berlin/Frankfurt

Facade builder: GIG Fassaden GmbH, Attnang-Puchheim/AT

Building automation: Kieback&Peter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin

Completed: February 2020

Sun shading system: Warema E 80 AF external venetian blinds with SMI motor (1,259 units)

External venetian blind control: Warema BAline LONMCM and BAline MIO SMI 8I (120 units)

Copyright: Warema. No fee for photo publication provided source indicated. A copy of the publication is requested. Photos may not be used for advertising purposes.