Cinnamon Tower, Hamburg

The architects under Prof. Julia Bolles-Wilson and Peter Wilson at the Münster-based firm of BOLLES+WILSON can keep things pretty small - take, for example, the wonderfully creative and truly very tiny concrete house in Tokyo they designed for Mr Suzuki in the early 1990s; or the House P residential building erected in Münster in 2012, which veritably flaunts the idea of “small is beautiful (+ energy efficient)”. The concept of “small” has evidently yet to catch on in a big way in Hamburg’s bubbling harbour city, though. The listed Old Harbour Authority, the only building that has survived from the area’s industrial past, stands amidst “six-storey sculptural blocks”.

It is now a top-notch hotel, part of an ensemble that also includes an exhibition-cum-marketing pavilion and Cinnamon Tower that was designed by the BOLLES+WILSON firm of architects. Cinnamon Tower, a water-front residential building between Überseeboulevard and Osakaallee, is a property for the seriously rich. It stands 211 feet high and contains 10 flats distributed over 14 storeys. The apartments are between 1,430 and 3,300 square feet in size and allegedly cost €864 per square foot. Those marketing the flats are hard put to formulate their merits: “What appears to be untoppable is topped by pure luxury” – in-house wellness and fitness area, loggia terrace, roof garden, whirlpool, sauna – and all with a view at all times over Hamburg or the impressive harbour.

The flats leave “nothing to be desired” inside, of course. Seeing to that is celebrated interior designer Ulrike Krages, who transformed each one of the owner-occupied flats into a luxurious one-off. The tower’s most beautiful aspects are, however, reserved not for its residents but as a visual treat for the city at large. It was not for nothing that its architects won an award for its exterior at the German Façade Prize ceremony in 2015.

Photos: Cordelia Ewerth, Christian Richters, Mitja Schneehage