The development area of the former Speicherstadt (warehouse district) in the city of Potsdam, near Berlin, consists of city blocks with different residential and office uses with the dominant hotel building of the niu Amity as a prelude.
The specified roof pitches were not planned as a conventional gable roof, but as an innovative and polygonally inclined roofscape, creating a dynamic building figure with rising and falling eaves.
The core of the design task was to overcome the difference in height between the station forecourt and the adjacent Havel river within the building block. Through the public passage for pedestrians, the building ensemble with its central city square represents the pedestrian connection for all residents of the adjacent quarter to the main station.
The 198 required rooms of the hotel are arranged in a ring around the central town square, where a maple tree has been planted to provide shade in summer. The Novum Group’s the niu Amity hotel offer is complemented by a long-term residential complex Acora Potsdam Living the City, whose 72 flats are available to scientists from the nearby Albert Einstein Science Park, among others.
