The Squaire is an office building in

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

, Germany. It was built between 2006 and 2011 on top of an existing train station ( Frankfurt Airport long-distance station) near

Frankfurt Airport Frankfurt Airport ( ) , is Germany's busiest international airport by passenger numbers, located in Frankfurt, Germany's fifth-largest city. Its official name according to the German Aeronautical Information Publication is Frankfurt Main Airpor ...

. The building is 660 m long, 65 m wide, and 45 m high, and it has nine floors. With a total floor area of it is the largest office building in Germany.''DB Schenker entscheidet sich gegen IVG''.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The (; ''FAZ''; "Frankfurt General Newspaper") is a German newspaper founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt and is considered a newspaper of record for Germany. Its Sunday edition is the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung'' ( ...

, Nr. 46, 24 February 2011, p.15. Its dimensions and design make it a groundscraper. The Squaire is directly connected to Terminal 1 of

through a pedestrian connecting corridor.

Name

The term ''Squaire'' is a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of the words ''

square In geometry, a square is a regular polygon, regular quadrilateral. It has four straight sides of equal length and four equal angles. Squares are special cases of rectangles, which have four equal angles, and of rhombuses, which have four equal si ...

'' and ''air''. The name was announced in June 2010. The project's original name was ''Airrail Center Frankfurt''. The term ''Airrail'' is a compound of the words ''air'' and '' rail''.

Location and connections

The Squaire is located between two motorways, the

Bundesautobahn 3 is an autobahn in Germany running from the Germany-Netherlands border near Wesel in the northwest to the Germany-Austria border near Passau. Major cities along its total length of 778 km (483 mi) include Oberhausen, Duisburg, Düsse ...

and the Bundesstraße 43, close to one of the most heavily used

Autobahn The (; German , ) is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official term is (abbreviated ''BAB''), which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'. Much of t ...

interchanges in Europe, the

Frankfurter Kreuz The Frankfurter Kreuz (''Frankfurt Junction'') is an Autobahn interchange in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where the autobahns A3 and A5 meet. The interchange was originally to be built from 1931 to 1933, but due to World War II construction was ...

. The building provides direct access to the train station below with 210 daily long-distance train connections, of which 185 are

ICE Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 ° C, 32 ° F, or 273.15 K. It occurs naturally on Earth, on other planets, in Oort cloud objects, and as interstellar ice. As a naturally oc ...

trains. A connecting bridge provides access to the airport terminals as well as to the Frankfurt Airport regional station. The Squaire is connected to a

multistorey car park A multistorey car park (Commonwealth English) or parking garage (American English), also called a multistorey, parking building, parking structure, parkade (Canadian), parking ramp, parking deck, or indoor parking, is a building designed fo ...

to the west by a

people mover A people mover or automated people mover (APM) is a type of small-scale automated guideway transit system. The term is generally used only to describe systems serving relatively small areas such as airports, downtown districts or theme parks ...

called ''MiniMetro'' operating high above the highway driveways.

History

When

Deutsche Bahn (, ; abbreviated as DB or DB AG ) is the national railway company of Germany, and a state-owned enterprise under the control of the German government. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). DB was fou ...

announced plans to build a fast rail link between

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

and Frankfurt (

Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed rail line The Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed rail line () is a high-speed line in Germany, connecting the cities of Cologne and Frankfurt. Its route follows the Bundesautobahn 3 for the greater part, and currently the travel time is about 62 minutes. Th ...

), it planned for a second train station at Frankfurt Airport, because it was clear that the existing train station would not be able to handle the predicted traffic. Construction work for a new train station close to the airport grounds started in 1995 and was finished in 1999. With a glass dome on top, it was designed to allow the later construction of an office building. In November 2006, preparatory construction work on the office building started based on a design by the Frankfurt based architecture firm JSK. The main investor of the project is the IVG Immobilien AG in Bonn. In 2006, after plans were delayed several years due to lack of potential tenants, the construction of the building, then called ''Airrail Center Frankfurt'', began with an announced opening day in 2010. The foundation stone was laid on 1 March 2007.''Airrail Center auf der ''Platte'' soll bis Ende 2009 fertig sein'' in ''Treffpunkt'' (Kundenzeitschrift der Flughafengesellschaft), Ausgabe 2/2007. Planned construction costs were 660 million

Euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

. Trouble with the construction company and the use of bad construction steel imported from China, which had to be replaced, pushed the costs up to 1 billion Euro. In June 2010, the name was changed to ''The Squaire''. From April to December 2011, the move-in of the main tenants took place in sections.

Tenants

The

accounting firm An accounting network or accounting association is a professional services network whose principal purpose is to provide members resources to assist the clients around the world and hence reduce the uncertainty by bringing together a greater numbe ...

KPMG KPMG is a multinational professional services network, based in London, United Kingdom. As one of the Big Four accounting firms, along with Ernst & Young (EY), Deloitte, and PwC. KPMG is a network of firms in 145 countries with 275,288 emplo ...

, two

Hilton hotels Hilton Hotels & Resorts (formerly known as Hilton Hotels) is a global brand of full-service hotels and resorts and the flagship brand of American multinational hospitality company Hilton Worldwide. The original company was founded by Conrad Hi ...

, and

Lufthansa Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), trading as the Lufthansa Group, is a German aviation group. Its major and founding subsidiary airline Lufthansa German Airlines, branded as Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. It ranks List of largest airlin ...

occupy space in The Squaire. KPMG has rented 40,000 square metres of office space with 2,150 staff members. In the eastern part are two Hilton hotels: Hilton Garden Inn Frankfurt Airport with 334 rooms and the Hilton Frankfurt Airport with 249 rooms in a total area of 34,500 m². Lufthansa has leased 18,500 m², and 1,000 of its employees moved in by the Spring of 2012. A area is provided for a medical center. is provided for restaurants and shops.

References

External links

The Squaire
{{DEFAULTSORT:Squaire Buildings and structures in Frankfurt Office buildings completed in 2011