EDGE Südkreuz Berlin

Modern offices offer flexible working time models and hotdesking options. Every level of EDGE Südkreuz therefore has meeting rooms, quiet areas for brainstorming, conference rooms for team work, and areas for informal discussions, combined with lounges and cafés, all based around the open atrium area. Particular consideration is given to digital sustainability with intelligent, customised technologies allowing the most efficient use to be made of the workplaces.

The use of environmentally acceptable building materials is central to the long life cycle of the buildings. After all, wood has a consistently high quality and can be used in many different ways. When wooden buildings are demolished after many decades, the remaining material is not scrap but can be reused instead. Wood therefore not only has an impressive ecological footprint but, as a natural building material, it also scores as a design element with an almost infinite life cycle. Both the buildings are therefore based on a recyclable wood-hybrid system.

Michael Arnold, Low-voltage Section Leader at Rohde Elektrotechnik Schaltanlagen Netzwerktechnik GmbH & Co. KG, who is already involved with the project, decided to continue his collaboration with INOTEC due to many years of successfully working together in collaborative partnerships. The technical benefits of the products encouraged him and his team to use them in the EDGE Südkreuz Berlin development as well. The fire protection concept did not require any safety lighting in the office and administrative wiring. But, as it is possible for this requirement to come up at a later date through workplace directive risk assessments, safety lighting was also included in the office and administrative wiring plan (corridors). The following areas were therefore fitted with safety lighting: escape and rescue routes, corridors, office spaces, stairwells and interlocking door systems, utility rooms, atriums, underground garages and escape routes to the outside.

One thing in particular was taken into consideration during planning. Above all, the building should be designed to be as flexible as possible. It should be possible to rent out each level in small units – including billing the electricity for the safety lighting by each rental area. A direct allocation to the relevant tenant therefore had to be guaranteed. Generally, an allocation is created based on the surface area of the rental area which is frequently not particularly fair. Stefan Stetefeld, Sales Director at INOTEC, explains the solution: “Our CPUSB 220/64/1 BUS substations and the integral circuit separating module allow the electricity consumption to be logged for each tenant via the mains connection to the tenant's distributor box.” This means the owner or operator of the building is also set up in the future as flexibly as possible. A further advantage of using the small BUS substations in each rental area was that it was possible to save on a substantial amount of E30 cabling. On a conventional installation, this would have unnecessarily filled or even over-filled the vertical ducting.