Hotel rooms in lieu of a parking lot
Photo: ECE Project Management
Cars only seldom park on the top level of a parking garage. That is why Björn Hiss and Nikolai Jäger asked themselves how this space could be used. They developed a modular concept for adding a story to existing buildings and established MQ Real Estate. Their first project is scheduled for completion this autumn: a hotel with a KfW-55 modular timber construction on an unused parking deck of the Ring-Center 2 shopping centre in Berlin. Novum Hospitality will operate the hotel under its new brand “niu”. The owner is ECE, Europe’s biggest developer and operator of shopping centres.
151 hotel room modules
The hotel consists of 151 Skypark hotel room modules on one level. To lift the largely prefabricated rooms onto the parking deck requires one of the biggest tower cranes available in Germany, which will be set up directly on the existing building. Service rooms and the rest of the hotel infrastructure will be built using conventional construction methods. Each niu features rooms with individual designs and unusual furniture. The Berlin flair at the niu Hide is a mixture of historic East German style, socialistic classicism, modern design and vintage mis-en-scène. MQ Real Estate is an innovator that specialises in building on top of parking garages where appropriate and feasible. According to the Bundesverband Parken association, many parking garages in large cities are utilised to a maximum of 50 to 60 percent. Since parking garages usually fill up from bottom to top, the topmost parking decks frequently remain unused. To revitalise these spaces, which are often not used for years and to use the potential for added value of existing real estate to good advantage is the core mission of the urban redensification of the Berlin-based real estate startup. MQ Real Estate is committed to sustainable and energy-efficient construction and hopes to reduce CO2 quantities significantly by using modular timber construction and ecological insulating materials.
The hotel consists of 151 Skypark hotel room modules on one level. To lift the largely prefabricated rooms onto the parking deck requires one of the biggest tower cranes available in Germany, which will be set up directly on the existing building. Service rooms and the rest of the hotel infrastructure will be built using conventional construction methods. Each niu features rooms with individual designs and unusual furniture. The Berlin flair at the niu Hide is a mixture of historic East German style, socialistic classicism, modern design and vintage mis-en-scène. MQ Real Estate is an innovator that specialises in building on top of parking garages where appropriate and feasible. According to the Bundesverband Parken association, many parking garages in large cities are utilised to a maximum of 50 to 60 percent. Since parking garages usually fill up from bottom to top, the topmost parking decks frequently remain unused. To revitalise these spaces, which are often not used for years and to use the potential for added value of existing real estate to good advantage is the core mission of the urban redensification of the Berlin-based real estate startup. MQ Real Estate is committed to sustainable and energy-efficient construction and hopes to reduce CO2 quantities significantly by using modular timber construction and ecological insulating materials.
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