Window's by Günther Schaller and Peter Kyncl

Window’s sets new office building standards in Stuttgart downtown and seeks to get in touch with its versatile surroundings through its façade design.
Once again, one of the unwanted office buildings from the 1970s in Stuttgart downtown had to make way for a new building. In favor of the Window’s business building with shops, catering services and office areas. The plans, evolved from an expert opinion process, were made by the German-Swiss Günther Schaller and Peter Kyncl bureau partnership, in existence since 2006. Before that time, Schaller worked for the Behnisch bureau since 1991, later became a partner.

Playing with Formats within the Context

The name Window‘s says it all and provides insights into the building’s concept: Cubes within white frames, Windows, protrude with plenty of contrast from the glazed, dark façade shell. They deliberately respond to the urban building context, since Window’s touches two very different street spaces. Theodor-Heuss-Straße, appointed a nightlife area despite the busy traffic, communicates with large-area Windows. A deliberate alternative to the rather serial never-ending façades displayed by the neighborhood. 

Smaller elements protrude like jutties towards Calwer Straße, characterized by a rather slower pace due to its pedestrian area. From there, employees can have an eye on the huzzle and buzzle in front of the shops and restaurants. Hence, the first floor of Window’s houses shops. Along the connection line between the two different street spaces, the façade designs are brought together to form a projection of two floors held inside a white frame across a corner. The maximum headroom of the sidewalk below is minimized to nearly 1.5 meters.

One for All

Featuring flexibly usable areas, the office floors group around an inner courtyard. Window’s has been designed as an office building for versatile usage. Since the auditing and consulting firm KPMG, conducting business on an international level, is the tenant on the seven floors, the office landscape has been turned into a vast in-house communication area. The three-story lobby in the atrium area can be accessed via stairs from Theodor-Heuss-Straße. In order to keep the first floor free for shops, it was re-located to the second floor. On the eighth floor, you can access the mandatory roof terrace from two meeting rooms, providing a view across Stuttgart’s downtown. 

Integrated Stock

Parts of the lower floors are remains of the old building, while the areas aboveground have already been demolished in 2007. Via the connection from the side, Kienstraße, the nearly 100 parking spaces in the basement can be accessed. This makes the hitherto access via Calwerstraße obsolete, so the latter can live up to its role as a popular end-to-end pedestrian area.

Constructor: Phoenix Real Estate Development GmbH, Stuttgart/Frankfurt a. M., Germany
Architect: Günther Schaller and Peter Kyncl, Stuttgart, Germany/Zurich, Switzerland
Completion: Autumn 2009
Size: GFA: 17,000 m²