Tchoban Voss Architekten and Barcode Architects Gather Dresden's Scattered City Offices into One Stadtforum

Dresden's city administration used to be spread across a series of buildings around town. A resident who needed advice, a permit or a registration often had to learn which office sat where. The Stadtforum ends that. It brings those public services into one building on the historic Ferdinandplatz, at the centre of the area now being redeveloped. The joint design by Tchoban Voss Architekten and Barcode Architects won first prize in the design competition. It was designed between 2019 and 2025 under lead architects Philipp Bayer and Joerg Rudloff, and it is now complete at roughly 35,000 square metres.

On paper, the brief could easily have produced a large, closed office block. What makes the result worth looking at closely is how carefully the architects treated it as civic architecture. The building is a single volume meant to read from every side. It holds the street lines around it, and that alignment creates a new polygonal square to the south. Inside, two green courtyards organise the office floors, and one of them is lifted up to form a semi-public terrace. Our view is that the Stadtforum is less a statement building than a repair job on Dresden's civic core, and it is a confident one.

A Stone Grid with a Bronze Crown

The facade works in two layers. The lower part is a pale stone grid with deep window reveals, and in raking light it becomes almost a relief. Above it sits a darker crown of bronze-brown coated aluminium fins that frame alternating glazed and solid panels. The split gives the block a clear base, middle and top. That is a familiar strategy in a European city centre, but here it is handled with real discipline.

The depth of the reveals is what matters most. Each window is set well back from the face of the stone, so the shadows do part of the sun-shading work and give the elevation weight without any extra ornament. The bronze-toned shutters, one of them carrying a small municipal crest, add a hint of institutional identity at a scale you only notice once you are close to the building.

A Building Without a Back Side

The designers describe the building as "all-sided", and the corner views support that claim. Wherever you approach from, whether across tram tracks, across a lawn or along a busy road, the volume looks like a finished object. There is no service elevation turned towards a less important street, which is notable for a building of this size and this programme.

The cut-out corners and deep recesses are where the scheme becomes more than a box. They break the mass at points where people approach on foot, and they signal entrances without relying on canopies or signage. At dusk, the glazed base glows beneath the dark finned upper floors. The building then reads the way a town hall should after hours: present on the street, but not loud.

Holding the Line Next to Old Dresden

The site sits in the middle of the inner city, and the views make the neighbours impossible to miss. A dark clock tower with a green copper dome and red tiled roofs appear in several frames, right next to the new finned upper storeys. The architects did not imitate the historic fabric, and they also avoided an abrupt contrast. They matched the height of the street wall, kept the stone base and allowed the crown to recede through its darker colour.

This works because the building follows the line of the surrounding streets instead of turning to face a view. The volume runs straight towards the northeast, and that geometry makes the Stadtforum read as part of the city plan rather than an object dropped onto a cleared site.

A New Square at the Front Door

The most generous urban move is the polygonal square that opens to the south. It exists because the building holds its street edges so firmly; the leftover space becomes the public room. The tall ground-floor windows and the central recess in the stone grid face onto this square, so the act of entering takes place in full view of the city.

Along the long facade, the glazed base sits directly next to lawn and paths rather than behind a plinth. Civic buildings often protect themselves with steps and setbacks. This one appears to trust its public, and the open ground floor is the clearest sign of that.

Two Courtyards as the Building's Lungs

From above, the plan is straightforward. The block is cut by two courtyards, and the roof between them is covered with sedum and rows of solar panels. The design team calls the courtyards the building's lungs, and the description fits. They bring daylight and orientation to office floors that would otherwise be very deep, and they give staff something living to look at beyond a screen.

From inside, looking up past the angled fins to a rectangle of sky, the courtyard feels smaller and more intimate than its plan suggests. The landscape design by Noack Landschaftsarchitekten uses a curving path and round shrubs. It softens what could have been a purely technical light well and turns it into a garden that people actually see from their desks.

A Terrace Lifted Above the Street

The eastern courtyard is raised above street level and becomes a semi-public terrace looking over St. Petersburger Straße. It is planned for breaks and informal meetings, and the café tables, planted beds and glass balustrade show that it is used as intended. A covered passage with a timber-toned soffit leads out onto it, so the move from office to open air happens gradually.

This is the part of the project we would most like to see copied. Administrative buildings rarely give their staff a real outdoor room. Putting one at an elevated position facing a major road gives the workforce a garden and, at the same time, gives the street a sign of life on the upper floors.

A Civic Interior in Timber and White

Inside, the interior design by Planungsbuero Bellmann changes the material palette. The stone gives way to timber slat ceilings, curved timber balconies and wide stepped seating, set against white built elements. The circular reception desk sets the tone: it has no front or back, which suits a building that aims to be approachable from every direction.

The stepped seating next to the service counter is a smart choice. Waiting is the main experience in any citizens' office, and here it takes place on a piece of furniture that could also hold a talk or an assembly. Escalators, digital totems and a sculptural white spiral stair over a round timber floor inset keep the circulation readable. Behind the scenes, a sprinkler system made it possible to remove the firewalls between units on each floor, and that is a large part of why the spaces feel continuous rather than divided.

Plans and Drawings

The figure-ground plan shows the pentagonal footprint fitting neatly into the city blocks around it. The ground floor plan has a pointed west end and a curved central wall that guides visitors in. On the upper floors, desks are arranged around the two landscaped voids within a ring of columns. The sections reveal how much of the building is hidden underground, with several levels and ramps beneath the offices. The elevations show the symmetrical, colonnaded front and the ribbed crown of vertical windows.

Why This Project Matters

Combining scattered public services under one roof can look like a simple efficiency measure. The Stadtforum shows that it can also be an act of city-making. By holding the street lines, creating a square, and treating every elevation as a public face, the architects have made an administrative building act as a landmark for ordinary civic life, not only for ceremony.

The project also argues that office buildings for the public sector deserve the same care as cultural buildings. The deep stone reveals, the courtyards used as lungs, the raised terrace and the timber civic hall are not luxuries. They are what makes a bureaucracy feel welcoming. Other cities planning to consolidate their municipal offices should study this one.

Stadtforum Dresden by Tchoban Voss Architekten and Barcode Architects. Location: Dresden, Germany. Area: 34,917 m². Year: 2025. Photography: Klemens Renner.

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