With the line of three “crane houses” in Cologne’s Rheinauhafen, loosely based on El Lissitzky’s utopian “Cloud-irons” dating from 1924, a new typology of skyscraper has been created. The already completed Crane House 1 provides the public on the Rhine bank promenade not only with the classical plaza in from of a cubic tower. The pure cube is rather interrupted sculpturally and does not realise its much greater volume until far above the ninth floor: as a slender 70-metre-long horizontal boom, not as a tower. The promenade does not lead past the building but right through it. With its dynamic form and in its association with the original historic loading cranes, the building sets a prominent sign of the onset of an architectural commitment of the city by the river.

based on drafts of the 1st prize winners workshop "Rheinauhafen" 1992: Bothe Richter Teherani / Busmann und Haberer / Linster / Schneider-Wessling / Abing