If a technical system in a building is paralyzed, this has consequences that can often reach far beyond this system.

In Berlin, one of the few architectural icons of the post-reunification period is in danger of falling victim to this: the GSW high-rise building in the newspaper district on Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse, which was completed in 1998.

The almost 82 meter high tower, which has already experienced several changes of ownership, always provides new views with its sun protection slats on its west facade, which shimmer in nine different shades of red and can be individually adjusted.

If you look west from the television tower or east from the radio tower over the sprawling inner city, you will notice the colored disc in the sea of ​​houses.

It is one of the first attempts to develop a decidedly ecological architecture in the inner city,

However, this house is now to be radically remodeled – also because the west facade no longer works as intended.

The facade and interior should be cooled, according to the concept of the architects Mattias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton and the engineering company Arup, which won the competition in 1991 and was revolutionary at the time enough.

However, as it has now turned out, GSW had the ventilation openings closed around 2005.

The result: behind the glass outer skin of the facade, the temperature rises not only to just over 30 degrees on nice sunny days, but to almost seventy degrees.

The metal parts bend, and in the rooms that are supposed to be naturally ventilated and cooled,

cooling units must be set up.

The avant-garde eco-architecture has become an energy guzzler in which the slats also rattle.

On top of that, many more people work in the house today than was originally planned, which is one of the reasons why the original ventilation systems are overloaded.

Aesthetic effect and airy appearance would be gone

The renovation plans caused outrage among Berlin architects.

That's why the Berlin Baukollegium has now also held a hearing about the future of the house;

the committee advises the Senate Building Director on questions of architecture.

Forty percent of the facade, according to the representatives of the Paris-based fund owners of the building and the Hamburg-based property manager of the Sienna company, is no longer functional, and the energy costs are around thirty percent higher than those of comparable houses.

They too are aware that this facade is more than just an appearance, namely a work of art with a supra-regional effect.

In fact, among the many high-rise buildings in Berlin that were built after reunification, only the GSW high-rise caused a sensation.