Topping-out ceremony today for the new KfW office building at Bockenheimer Landstrasse in Frankfurt

• New build creates office space for 300 KfW employees
• Particularly low consumption of primary energy
• Occupancy scheduled for 2016

At 4 p.m. today KfW will hold a topping-out ceremony to celebrate its new office building located at Bockenheimer Landstrasse 104 in Frankfurt am Main. A KfW building erected in 1958 was torn down last year to make way for the property. The old structure no longer met the technical and functional requirements of a modern office building.

After its completion in 2016, the new office building at KfW's headquarters in Frankfurt will offer room for approximately 300 employees, an internal training centre and an underground car park. The new building has seven upper floors, is roughly 24 metres tall and also has three floors underground. The total gross floor space equates to 10,600 square metres. One of the building's distinguishing features is the particularly low consumption of primary energy at just 125kWh per square metre annually. "Our business focuses on activities that promote the protection of climate and environment; for this reason we ourselves also want to send out visible signals for the careful, conservative handling of resources" explained Dr Günther Bräunig, Member of the KfW Executive Board on the occasion of the topping-out ceremony. "The premise for the new building was therefore to erect a simple, efficient office building that meets special requirements of sustainability and energy efficiency."

Directly beside the new office building, KfW is also currently renovating Villa 102, formerly the Literaturhaus Frankfurt, which is protected as a historical monument. The Executive Board of KfW decided back in 2012 to buy the building that had already been vacant for a number of years, restore it as a historical treasure and open it up as centre for cultural interaction between arts, commerce, politics and citizens.

"In doing so, we want to give something back to the city of Frankfurt and the neighbouring Westend district for the quality of life that we sense at this location," said Dr Bräunig. The renovation of Villa 102 is also scheduled for completion in 2016.

A rendering of the new KfW office building at Bockenheimer Landstrasse 104 can be downloaded at

www.kfw.de