The vision is clear: The neigh­bour­hood sur­round­ing Willy-Brandt-Strasse in Hamburg‘s Alt­stadt dis­trict, nes­tled between Hopfen­markt and St. Niko­lai, is to be turned into a vibrant urban space for the peo­ple who live and work here. The Tichel­haus (Tichel is Plattdeutsch for brick) with its red brick façade is typ­i­cal for authen­tic Ham­burg archi­tec­ture and plays a key role in the trans­for­ma­tion, owing, on the one hand, to its promi­nent loca­tion on Willy-Brandt-Strasse, Ham-burg‘s east-west link. Its neigh­bour­hood is the birth­place of the Hanseat­ic City and home to Hopfen­markt (or hop mar­ket), which was an impor­tant mar­ket for cen­turies. But it is equal­ly quin­tes­sen­tial in terms of urban design: It picks up on Hamburg‘s his­toric brick­work tra­di­tion, re-inter­pret­ing it and open­ing up a new chap­ter of build­ing with bricks.

Accord­ing­ly, the archi­tec­ture of the new build­ing inter­acts with that of the sur­round­ing build­ings in a live­ly way, high­lights the impor­tance of the town‘s archi­tec­tur­al her­itage and bridges his­toric and mod­ern archi­tec­tur­al styles. The build­ing is designed for open­ness towards the city and its peo­ple and seizes this oppor­tu­ni­ty to give the city back some of its tra­di­tion and qual­i­ty of stay.