News: OMA has seen off competition from BIG and Buro Ole Scheeren to win a competition to expand the Berlin headquarters of multimedia firm Axel Springer.
The firm, led by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, triumphed with a concept for a building featuring a 30-metre-high atrium that "lavishly broadcasts" its interior to the existing Axel Springer building next door.
Tasked with developing a structure that sets new standards in terms of internal atmosphere and room layout, OMAÂ proposes a series of tiered floors that extend out to external terraces.
Hearing about the win, Rem Koolhaas said: "It is a wonderful occasion to build in Berlin again, for a client who has mobilised architecture to help perform a radical change: a workplace in all its dimensions."
The building will create additional space for the company's growing business divisions, particularly its digital departments.
"Rem Koolhaas drafted a building which only on second sight reveals its secret, architecturally formulating a new kind of collaborative working at its core," said Regula Lüscher, director of the city's urban development department.
"The concept offers a strong symbolic force as it leads the course of the Berlin Wall diagonally through the building, thereby creating an atrium and spectacular interior, which addresses the unification of this city," she added.
The shortlist for the competition was revealed back in December. The proposals of all three firms will go on show at the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt later this year.