www.archipcture.eu - Friedrich Wilhelm Simon

The building of the Investment Banking Center Frankfurt (IBCF) of the Deutsche Bank is a 93-meter tall skyscraper in downtown Frankfurt am Main. The building was built from 1969 to 1971 according to a design by the architect William Friedrich Simon, and is today one of only few buildings of this generation, which have remained largely unchanged since then. The building is located on an elongated, rectangular plot with a northeast-southwest orientation. The largest part of the built-up area constitutes an elongated, seven-storey tract in the southwest. It is connected to a a somewhat lower, mainly glazed addition in the northern courtyard. In the northeastern part of the plot, also on a rectangular ground plan, but oriented towards the Grosse Gallusstrasse, is located the 21-storey main building. The uniform design of side wing and high-rise building is characterized by the late phase of the International Style. Each floor has completely encircling bands of windows. The narrow parapets and a part of the annex building in the southwest are clad with a dark natural stone. The curtain wall construction consists of dark brown steel. The horizontally encircling balconies with parapets and vertical arrangement of rods recalls the architecture of Egon Eiermann.