City Nord Centre

The focal point of City Nord is the Central Zone, erected in 1970 – 1974, with its service centres guaranteeing the business park its independence. On the one hand, not only do employees have access to conventional retail shops, and, for example, medical services, .but the companies themselves can also make use of the facilities.

The Central Zone also boasts a hotel, built in 1970 (today called the Queens Hotel, part of the Best Western chain) and a Post office, built in 1974. Both buildings were designed by the architects Ingeborg and Friedrich Spengelin, equally responsible for drawing the plans for the framework of the Centre, and for project coordination. They won the contract because of their previous involvement in other City Nord building projects. Coordination had proved difficult because the interests and ideas of so many different clients and their architects and the construction departments had to be unified.

The building of the Centre was conceived in two phases (north and south) to assimilate more easily with the existing office buildings. However there is still visible proof today of the coordination problems exemplified by the sudden jump in height of the pedestrian levels between the two building phases. It is worth mentioning that there was no competition held for the contract to build the Centre and perhaps this explains the lower quality compared to the rest of City Nord’s architecture.