Dipl.-Ing. Architect BDA
SHA Scheffler Helbich Architects in Berlin
Our planning office in the capital
“Berlin! Berlin! We are starting in Berlin!” That’s what we said at the beginning of 2019 when we opened our branch there. To expand our company headquarters in Dortmund, SHA has had a presence in the heart of the capital ever since. Today, we have managed to turn the initial euphoria into projects and competition successes.
Christoph Wunderlich is our location manager and business developer in Berlin Mitte. He worked closely with the entire team to establish the new office for SHA. At the end of 2018, he initially spent three months on site in our Dortmund architecture office to get to know his colleagues in the Ruhr region and to learn about the philosophy of SHA internalized. In February 2019, he then set up a Berlin co-working space laid the foundation for SHA’s work in Berlin. Sinh Nguyen, another experienced architect, joined the Berlin team in spring 2020. Both are primarily responsible for acquisition, design and competition procedures.
Two years after the launch, we asked Christoph Wunderlich and Christoph Helbich, Managing Partner of SHA, to sit down together. Together, they look back on the last 24 months.
SHA has been based in Dortmund for over 90 years. How did you come to the decision to open a planning office in Berlin?
Helbich: “It just felt right to take the next step with our architecture firm. SHA has always worked for its clients throughout Germany, and our people are on the road every day on the north-south axis. By contrast, we were underrepresented in the East. Our two Dortmund locations (SHA has since moved to the PhoenixWERKed.) wanted to be sensibly supplemented. And so it made sense to focus on the capital.”
Wunderlich: “I was already working as a senior architect in Berlin at the time. The task of anchoring a traditional family business from the Ruhr region in the capital was very appealing to me. The aim was to bring SHA’s unique DNA to Berlin and expand it even further.”
SHA has realized over 400 projects throughout Germany in the past decades. Its particular expertise lies in the planning of large-scale industrial and commercial properties, administrative and office buildings and sports facilities. Has this focus changed with the Berlin office?
Helbich: “Thanks to our colleagues in Berlin, we can react even more flexibly to the high demand from our customers throughout Germany and make optimum use of our capacities and resources for our ‘specialty areas’. Christoph also brings a great deal of expertise in the planning of hotels. With the planning of residential projects, educational facilities and the design of urban development concepts, we are now even more broadly positioned.”
Wunderlich: “Here’s an example: together with Hummert Architekten BDA (ARGE Hummert Hullak Rannow), we are responsible for the new station canopy and the stop roofs for the urban infrastructure project ‘Ulm City Station’, which are real eye-catchers on the station site. With this project, Planungsbüro Berlin is standing on its own two feet. We also played a leading role in several competitions: for the new building for the Dortmund Adult Education Centerfor the extension of the Radisson Blu Hotel Dortmund and for the renovation and new construction of an attractive residential project in Berlin Mitte. We are currently working again for RB Leipzig again.
And how does the cooperation between the headquarters in Dortmund and the planning office in Berlin work?
Wunderlich: “We are in almost daily contact. Before Corona, we also saw each other regularly in person, but of course we have put our travel activities on hold for the time being. Zoom & Co. will have to replace the ‘real’ meeting for the time being. We hope that we will be able to come to the PhoenixWERK in Dortmund in the summer at the latest.”
Helbich: “We are also planning to strengthen the team exchange between the Ruhr region and Berlin in the – hopefully near! – future. We want to regularly send employees from Dortmund to Berlin for joint projects.”
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