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The Week in Germany: Current Affairs January 19, 2007 Germany’s Gate to the World: Designs Chosen for the Heart of Hamburg’s Hafencity
On a stretch of tidal flats that used to form the core of Hamburg’s ports, architects are planning the city of the 21st century. After the reconstruction of Berlin’s Mitte district, Hamburg’s Hafencity will be the largest urban development project in Germany. The project is something of a playground for prominent architects from across Germany and the world. On over 150 hectares, they were tasked with conjuring up a futuristic landscape 1.8 million square meters of gross floor space including 5,500 apartments for 12,000 people and 40,000 workers. The designs for the nucleus of the new district, the Überseequartier, are in, and an exhibit in Hamburg’s cruise ship terminal is giving the public a preview of the development, slated for completion in 2009. At Chicago Square on the other end of the development, designs have also been published online that depict the futuristic skyscrapers imagined by teams of architects from the Windy city. GoogleEarth to offer 3-D Tours of Hamburg While Hamburg gets a facelift, Google has been working with the Hamburg media organization Hamburg@work to put it on the map – literally. Hamburg will become the first German city available in 3-D on GoogleEarth. The virtual magic carpet ride through Germany’s media capital will be even more vivid than those GoogleEarth currently offers through American cities. The Swiss firm CyberCities took 500 aerial photos of the Hanseatic city from 1,000 meters (3280 feet) and used advanced software to eliminate distortion and extrapolate subtle details like the texture of building facades, resulting in a stunningly realistic depiction. Users will be able to view buildings at distances as close as one foot. The public release of the software has not yet been disclosed. Links: |
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