Architecture | Coca Cola Building in Berlin by NPS Tchoban Voss

We heard some mixed responses from readers the last time we profiled a red building on CFile, but perhaps that was because it was difficult to separate the building’s purpose (a blood bank) with its design. Blood has a lot of uncomfortable connotations to it as a substance, but good ol’ Coca Cola?

Okay, Coke is probably still uncomfortable, depending on how politically aware or health conscious you are, but let’s give this red building a shot. The pictures you’re seeing here are from the Coca Cola headquarters in Berlin, designed by NPS Tchoban Voss.

The designers told ArchDaily that the seven-storey building has one open side to the River Spree, and three other sides characterized by strip windows that switch positions at each level and by ceramic cladding in different tones of red, the company’s calling card. The architects state that the shape, dimensions and chroma of the ceramic elements are customized so that each piece fits within the building’s overeaching design.

“As a reference to the tenants main brand Chinese vermilion was chosen for the coloring, completed by both two brighter and two darker shadings. In addition to the pixelation of the monochrome red scale the two lighter tones were glazed matte, while the other three ones are high-glossy, maintaining the façade’s (logo) even from an oblique point of view. And also, the light tones remain visible despite the façade’s tendency to reflect.”

The building looks more like an apartment complex than a company headquarters, to my eye. And if we had to compare this to the blood center in Poland we mentioned at the beginning of this piece, I think I prefer the earlier work. The Coca Cola building, with its windows that switch positions, red balcony railings and smaller glazed tiles that come in several shades, looks choppier and fragmented in a way that isn’t comfortable. The blood bank isn’t comfortable either, but only because of my phobia of the thousands and thousands of needles lurking behind its walls. As a building it looks sleeker and more unified.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Bill Rodgers is a Contributing Editor at CFile.

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