International Highrise Award 2020

The so-called OMNITURM in Frankfurt am Main, a 189-metre-high skyscraper in the heart of Frankfurt City designed by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group for the client Tishman Speyer and completed this year, is an important success for the engineering office of Prof. Matthias Pfeifer and his wife, who have been running their office PfeiferINTERPLAN BAUBERATUNG together for 32 years. It is not the only skyscraper from this office, seven of the office's skyscrapers alone stand in Istanbul with heights of up to 300 m, others in Abu Dhabi. The Omni Tower, however, is the only skyscraper to have made it to the final round of the prestigious "International Highrise Awards".

This prize is awarded every two years to the developer together with the architectural firm. Worldwide, more than 1,000 high-rise buildings are selected on the basis of various quality criteria. Of these, a top-class jury selects 31 projects for the preliminary round, and of these, five are then selected for the final round. Among the 31 selected projects there were six from Europe, two of them from Germany, 15 from Asia, six from the USA, three from South America and one from Africa.

With the planning, elaboration and calculation of the entire very complex construction and the preparation of hundreds of working drawings, the engineering office made a decisive contribution to the success of this building. The structure consists of a 2.9-meter-thick foundation slab on approx. 50 up to 27-meter-long and 1.5-meter-thick piles, a central core that has to absorb the enormous wind forces as well as a weight of around 100,000 tons, as well as all the deck structures, which were manufactured with hundreds of prefabricated parts, right up to the top of the tower, which is stressed on three floors by heavyweight ventilation units.

A particular design challenge was the so-called "hip swing" in the first third of the tower, where the supports are angled up to 35° to the vertical to allow the "dance of the floors" around the core.

For the realization of this extraordinary structure, which was erected in the standard floors in an enormous pace of 4 days per floor, ten experienced engineers* as well as up to 20 constructors* were employed in the office PfeiferINTERPLAN for three years.

Further information:
Professorship Structures
International Highrise Award

The Omnitum in Frankfurt/Main. Photo: Prof. Matthias Pfeifer